Finalist Tree #1 Driftwood Comments

bonsaial1

Karl Thiel from Austria

Karl has captured the essence of Driftwood style Bonsai. The use of waterfall style foliage pads goes a long way to create the drama needed to do driftwood effectively. The use of foliage crossing the trunk has impact on my sense of the design. I like the background element as well, with vivid color, yet not overwhelming. Very nice.


Runner up; Old Mister Crow

OMC has also entered a very nicely done juniper. The lack of foliage crossing the trunk swayed my dicision, although I think this was close second.

The one thing missing from all the entrys in this class was the element of height. No one wished to put a decent crown on any of these entrys. I was very hopefull to see huge gushing canopys of dense green foliage, yet everyone took the austere approach.

Comments welcome.

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Carl_Bergstrom

Right on, judges.

Karl's tree is clearly the nicest of the bunch. The foliage detail is excellent and the main jin emerges beautifully from the canopy!

I really liked Albin's effort as well. This was the other strong contender in by book. I actually his design is even better balanced than Karl's (or mine). The difference comes down to the extraordinary job that Karl did at integrating the foliage and the trunk.

I had a lot of fun working on this tree as well, more than I expected to have. I don't usually work in the style, so it was a brand new experience for me and I couldn't really figure out what to do with all of that curling driftwood on there. I left it all, probably a mistake. I tried to base my design around a triangle of triangles; but I see now that I should have brought the foliage from the upper right triangle out in front of the main trunk. Oops!

Best regards,
OMC

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whidn

I know mine arent the best virtual here but at least I followed the rules and entered only one virtual..
Sure I could have done better and entered another pic, but I chose not to because the rules say not to.

All in all there are some of the best virtuals that I've ever seen here. Kinda makes me wonder if all those bonsai pictures I have on file are real bonsai.

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