malhomme

So many people are citing a rule for bunjin, saying "there's too much foliage on your tree!" Removing foliage to make a bunjin is like cutting a tree to 8" just to make it a shohin, regardless of design.

What you displayed in your first post was a freshly wired Hinoki Cypress with plates of foliage oblique to the camera, having not yet oriented themselves to the sun. Even with that there was nothing wrong with the amount of foliage in the first pic.

Because your composition was sound-- balance, taper, use of negative space, asymmetry and not entirely cookie cutter-- I would say that you could have called it a bunjin in the making. The tree made sense to me. Wiring a second trunk under a large branch certainly did not make sense. I concede that the design was better suited for a juniper than a Hinoki Cypress (plate-like foliage and difficulty keeping it in trim), but we work with what we have.

Unfortunately, it now looks like a tree designed by committee. Reading these posts, I do not wonder why.

Kind regards,
Jim