"Natural Looking"

ChrisM

as much as i love this hobby/art we all take part in called bonsai, i have always been confused by the use of the words "natural looking". they seem to get tossed towards the tree forms that you would be most UNLIKELY to find in nature. take for instance the juniper (any variety), in the wild they can be found as wildly overgrown shrubs or trees with no real "bonsai" quality form. we then take these trees, prune them, wire them, shape them, and what once was a bush is now a 6 inch tall tree with only 6 or seven branches and very little foliage compared to its wild beginning. so my question would be, how can we then use the words "natural looking" to describe what quite simply isn't?

chris

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ChrisM

let me also say that i would rather not spend the time to give examples from the forum for two reasons, 1. i don't want anyone to think i am bashing thier comment or tree, and 2. i don't want to spend the time looking up all the comments with "natural looking" or some comparable comment in them. we have all seen some of these, i am just curious.

chris

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TreeBay

Well here are the gallery posts that use NATURAL in the description.

http://pictures.bonsaitalk.com/key/natural

can't help you with the comments, though.

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ChrisM

matt, i have also done that, i am talking in general, whether in the gallery or any of the forums, how can a tree that in the wild looks like this,

Attached Images

1.jpg (5.0 KB, 207 views)

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ChrisM

be turned into this and solicite comments like "natural looking", "very natural", etc.

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2.jpg (2.5 KB, 205 views)

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pdbbonsai

Mother Nature takes care of shaping trees in different environments. Lets say a white pine in a forest with no wind, no harsh elements would naturally grow up right and full. In another environment, say a rocky island in a Northern lake would take on harsh winds, little soil and a constant bashing of waves, would be shaped naturally as well. Windswept, perhaps literati. But definitely jinned and with little foliage.

Colin Lewis in his Art of Bonsai Design put it this way. "Mother Nature is a far better artist than any human could hope to be. All we can do is try to mimic her perfection."


Paul

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mkonig

Hi Chris

I think that trees you see in a park look like the image in your first picture and some (relatively) young Trees.

To get images that bonsai prefers to portray you may need to look a bit further afield. Here in the UK we have many massive old oaks would be bonsai masterpieces if they could be scaled down.
Some of them don't even need to be scaled down! In Exmoore, there is a forest of oaks that grows on a slope down towards the sea. While the trees at the upper slope are more or less of normal size, the further you come down the slope towards the sea, the trees get smaller and smaller. There are some specimens that are no taller than 1 meter that have been accurately aged to 100 years +.
With age, Scotts pines grow naturally in to near perfect bunjin style trees.

As Paul said, who can improve on nature. At best we can try to imitate and capture a vision in our trees.

Regards

Mike

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Attila

Hi Chris,

Here is a (not all-inclusive) list of attributes associated with "natural-looking bonsai":

* Use of "rules" is not apparent in the design. It is either hidden (by a very talented artist) or ignored (by a self-proclaimed artist).

* The overall appearance is NOT reminiscent of classical bonsai forms.

* It may be suggestive of mature trees in nature. Important qualifier: the mature tree it represents does not have to belong to the same species (you can represent a mature spruce using a juniper as material).

You may want to check out Walter Pall's posts on this forum. He is the world's foremost authority on natural bonsai. There are a few long threads that explore this subject to exhaustion.

Attila

bass

I studied Painting with an artist. I always remember what he kept telling me. "Sometimes you have to lie in the painting". meanning changing slightly in the drawing makes it more attractive... also changing the colors in the background creates depth. I could relate a lot of that to bonsai. Bonsai is created by an artist who changed the look, so he could make a more attractive natural looking tree.

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