Last Juniper

bonsaial1

This is the last juniper that I have in the yard. It was part of a group of 10 junipers that I bought from Mas Ishii a few years back. The others have either been styled or have been sold or given away.

The second to the last one was used for the 20.00 bonsai contest last year.

I took this tree to the Hanford club meeting. The new President wants to focus more on "hands on" type of meetings, where the less learned bring material, and the more advanced can offer help and styling suggestions. This juniper was about 12" tall, and rather bushy. I was not to sure of the design potential, and that is why it was the last one to be rough styled for potensai.

This is the way the plant looked at the beginning of the evening.

Attached Images

start.jpg (47.5 KB, 371 views)

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Revealing the tree from underneath shows the more traditional slingshot type of trunk so prevalent on junipers. With a trunk like this the only option is to remove one of the trunks. Obviously the design will fall into the litarati style due to the size of the trunk, the lack of designer branches down low, and the lack of significant taper. These are the building blocks of good bonsai.

When those three things are abundent, design issues are much more broad. Lacking those three reduces your design ideas significantly.

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ugly branch.jpg (57.4 KB, 363 views)

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The large branch on the right was removed. This left a large scar, which luckly was near the back of the tree.

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big scar.jpg (51.7 KB, 357 views)

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With the forked trunk reduced to one trunk, we can begin the the selection of the final branching. The tree at this point looks like a mushroom, and the removal of more branches will help decide the final shape of the plant.

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more removal.jpg (47.9 KB, 347 views)

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In this view, I have started selective branch removal. This is where the basic design is taken to the point that the tree is starting to look like the final design, just missing the wiring. The wiring is the glue that will bind the design together and make the thing stay the way it looks good.

The red lines represent the original trunk line. I mentioned in the beginning that the tree was around 12" tall. I had figured on useing the red outline as the apex of the tree. I liked the shape, and the trunk took interesting turns and twists. The problem was that this plant had terrible taper for almost the entire length of the trunk. By useing the whole thing it would acccentuate the fact the trunk was worse than it really is. I decided to chop it back.

This left a large branch sticking out to the right that I had intended to use as a second branch in the original design. I decided to acccentuate this large area by turning it into jin. I carved it back and stripped all the bark from the entire area, even down onto the trunk(more about that later)

The area in yellow is the direction of the new apex. It is hard to tell in the photo since it blacks out in the photo, but there is plenty of wood to build upon the crown here.

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colloredprint.jpg (41.5 KB, 352 views)

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I applied wire to all the branches and down to the tertiary branches. The branches were bent into their final positions. In this photo you can see the jin for the first time. While doing the work in a setting of a lot of people standing around and watching everything you do, you forget to take the pictures along the way.

.BONSAI TEST: In this photo there remains a flaw. I did not see it till tonight when I began taking pictures in front of a black background in preperation for a pot virtual. The flaw is small, but noticible nevertheless. I spotted it right away. Lets see how sharp your witts are since the clue lies elsewhere on the forum.

The next series of photos have the flaw corrected and can be compared for reference if needed

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wiring for shape.jpg (41.4 KB, 356 views)

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Photo montage of the tree in a Sara Rayner Bunjin pot. I love this pot and would like to use it soon. I need the right tree and this may be it.

Height: 7" tall
Trunk: 3/4" thick at base

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greensara.jpg (59.3 KB, 346 views)

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This is the tree in a Tokonome nail head drum pot from Japan. This too is a nice pot, though a tad small. But mayby...

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tokmontage.jpg (48.0 KB, 329 views)

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THE FUTURE This spring after the buds break, I plan on introducing some shari on the trunk. I did this during the intial design phase of the 20.00 contest tree and paid the price for it with some dead branches above the shari. The tree did not have time to find a new means of getting sustinance to the top of the tree and rewarded me with dead branches.

I plan on working a spiral shari around the trunk. I have not tried this in the past, but have always found them desirable. I think it will look good on this plant because of the way the branches come off the trunk. I will work a little at a time and see what happens.

Also by running the shari from the top down, and starting with the jin, I can carve away some of the mass away from the underneath side of the trunk in that area and make the tree appear to have better taper.

Thanks for listening, Al Keppler

Attached Images

shari.jpg (25.1 KB, 325 views)

__________________
I been kidding the last seven years.
no.... really!