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Sensei-in-Training (Very)
Join Date: Jun-2006
Location: Baltimore
Country: USA
Posts: 584
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One of the more experienced members of my club says that his first step is to "clean up" a tree, that is, remove anything that obviously doesn't have a future so you can better see what's left. He takes off growth from the underside of branches, growth that is overcrowding the spaces between adjacent branches, etc. Mostly he is only removing the small stuff in this step. Then he sits back and examines what's left to determine his design.
Of course. that's his way of working. It may not be yours. Myself, I have a more wholistic approach. I tend to look at the tree for a bit to get some ideas, and if while looking I see something that I'm very sure won't be of value, I'll take it off. But I may then bend something around to try positions, tip the pot, take off some more unnecessary growth, wire a key branch, etc. I tend to work from bottom to top, but not always strictly.
In the case of your tree, I see one thing that seems fairly obvious right off the bat: you could do a cascade with the long branch. You might try playing with that whenever you get ready to do some work on it. But that's just one idea. There may be other directions to go, too.
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