OMC's Shimpaku Project

DavidN

Here are a couple of my attempts. I do believe that the right side branch is the one to keep. First one is leaving the branch in its current position.

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shimpaku1_cleaned_out_lowqual2.jpg (26.1 KB, 142 views)

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DavidN

Here is the trunk tilted 40 degs counter clockwise.

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shimpaku1_cleaned_out_lowquala.jpg (25.0 KB, 137 views)

dbz12fan

The upright one looks semi-dull.

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Charles Bevan
Vero Beach, Fl

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bonsaial1

Have you shown us the best juniper?
Are you saving the best for last?

The trunks on this one scream "Slingshot". Maybe you had something very unusual in mind when you bought this one. If you did would you explain your reasoning for the purchase of the very obtuse trunk line.

If you bought these as an exercise in " being the demo guy at a convention and being asked to make something good" disregard the last questions.

I ask for foregiveness in seeing only the negatives in this juniper. I am sure that the tree has some redeaming qualities that brought you to the point of purchaseing it. The photo's may be showing the angles in the worst possible shape.

I agree with Matt about the size difference in the trunk and branches, being negligible. This would be a hard task to introduce taper to. If it were a maple it would be no trick at all.

Dazzle us all with your plans for the future, I will be anxious to see what you come up with!

Bonsai-al

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Carl_Bergstrom

Wow - thank you for all of the comments! This has been extremely useful and interesting! I see that perhaps I made a purchasing mistake with this particular tree. Let me tell you a bit more about what I was thinking when I picked it (along with two others, from a selection of maybe 18 of these.)

I really liked the trunk lines of this one - somehow the shapes appealed to me. That middle trunk moves back and away from the right trunk with a really nice sort of shape. But the large size of that right trunk was a glaring flaw - if only it were halrf the size! So I was puzzled as to how I \would style this tree. I spent maybe 20 minutes looking at it, and couldn't figure out what to do. I kept looking for the set of daring, decisive chops that would knock it down to a well-tapered 8" tree. I couldn't see how to do it, and so I set it aside...and came back to it 20 minutes later, and then it clicked for me, or at least so I thought at the time: Let the tree be the tree that it wants to! That is, let it be a larger, almost oak-shaped form. Let it keep all three trunks, at different heights, and let it branch low, like a bush, but style it well enough that bush-ness is not a problem.

Remember that I was buying these trees as learning material, more than for trees that I'd have around in two decades. This seemed like a fun challenge, and I liked the idea of styling the tree in a way that I usually would not think to try. In the process, I'd be able to get right down to business learning to form good foliage layers on shimpaku.

So I was envisioning something along the lines of the virtual below. (Apologies for the terrible quality - my desktop has crashed and so I had to do this whole thing using a laptop "trackpoint" instead of mouse. Yuck!)

Now I see the virtues of the approaches suggested in the virtuals. I especially like David's "semi-dull" styling. Half full or half empty, this one, and the others as well, lack the glaring flaws of the tree I've pictured here. But I'm curious - do you really like them better? Will either approach actually lead to great tree on down the road, or with this particular material, am I just making do anyway? Maybe I just screwed up, and need to style this one as well as possible and set it on the club auction table - after all, I bet that in a year if I took my route, I'd have it looking nice enough for a newbie to really enjoy.

I'll look forward to your comments!

Best regards,
Carl

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bonsaial1

Damn,I was going to sugest the naturalistic approach but then chickened out at the last minute! I like the look, except where the two dominate trunks start to come back on each other and converge. If you could mask that more it might be something.

Al

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DavidN

Agreed, very nice style.

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Carl_Bergstrom

Thanks, Al.

I think I really can mask that wishbone re-converging that you mentioned, but I didn't bother to try in the virtual because I wanted to try to make the case for this approach even without doing that. But I will try it, in part because I want this to be a learning tree. The idea would be to induce a strong rightward bend in that central trunk by notching the wood and then cranking down with a guy wire. I've done this before on shimpaku and it seems to work well.

Best tree or worst tree? I don't know. It's an interesting tree for me at the place where I am in my own learning, in that I certainly don't usually think of styling a tree this way. It's also interesting to me in that I'm trying to work with the flaws rather than prune them away. Most of the previous posts picked up on those flaws right away, so maybe I was naive to believe that I could work with them. We'll see. It'll be a good learning experience, so far as material selection is concerned! Finally, I thought that on this tree, I wouldn't need to prune off 75% of the foliage and wait for a year. I can start wiring right away. I so simply for the wiring practice I considered the price of the tree just a bargain tuition in my on-going bonsai education.

I have a couple of other junipers that I'll probably handle in a somewhat more conventional manner, chopping hard for taper and regrowing. I'll post those shortly, once I get them cleaned up.

With my best regards,
Carl

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