Bonsai Rules

pootsie

"The rules only try to incorporate into words the visual language that the eye understands. ... Follow them -- or not, or use them when they're needed. If you don't, you will probably wind up with informal upright trees, only uglier and messier than if you didn't."

-- Mark Rockwell (aka rockm), in Breaking the Rules

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p.s. My cat is a bonsaiTALK Master.
Columbus Bonsai Society

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zen

YES Bonsai RULES !!

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"Although profoundly "inconsequential," the Zen experience has consequences in the sense that it may be applied in any direction, to any conceivable human activity, and that wherever it is so applied it lends an unmistakable quality to the work."

~ Alan Watts (1915-1973)

http://www.bonsaiswap.com/

RonMartin(deceased)

"Imagination, we all have it, to some degree or the other. But in styling a bonsai we all too often don't call on our imagination and attempt to recreate a bonsai in the image of some basic bonsai icon, stoically following styling traditions that came from Japan some 50 years ago. These basic "rules", or principals, ARE important and ARE essential in getting on started on the road to creating good bonsai; but they are only the beginning of the journey, they are not the end all to bonsai design. The Japanese did not continue to copy the Chinese; they took what the Chinese had to offer and, using their imagination and skills, created their own bonsai based on what they see in their own land. If we are to progress in our chosen art, we to must evolve, develop, digress, deviate, exercise free thinking and adapt the best history has to offer and use examples in our own landscape on which to build"

Tom Zane

zube

or

you have to learn to walk before you can run

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Sorry doesn't put thumbs back on the hand, Marge.
H. Simpson

ElGringo

An old chinese proverb for your interest:

''Rules are for the obedience of fools and the guidance of wise men''

I guess every tree is unique, so you can't always create an excact copy of a said design, but only to observe the rules and try to 'branch out'

get it?

Gringo ^_^

RonMartin(deceased)

Now this I like. It is so very true.

SiNguyen

"The most important rule in bonsai is do not make any more rule", by David Fukumoto of Fuku Bonsai in Hawaii. I heard this from him during my visit there a few years ago, and it stuck with me ever since.
Si

Macross

Bonsai can be seen in so many lights, but should be fluid and independant. It can be an expression of ones self inside and out. An extension?

Rules I feel in this sence should be bent but not broken, they are there for a purpose after all


Macross the Black

carmi

It isn't a Chinese old proverb, it was said by "The pilot without legs"
Group Captain Sir Douglas Robert Steuart Bader, DSO and Bar, DFC and Bar, RAF (21 February 1910–5 September 1982);

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Shalom (Peace),
Moshe.

Colors are an optic illusion of light – As viewers for the bonsai creation. M.S.C.