This post is for Ethan

Soooo I visited a nursery today :> and got my very first pair of concave cutters!!

For those who don't know what they are, concave cutters are a bonsai artist's best friend; they cut a - you guessed it - concave chunk out of the tree, so when you cut the branch close enough to the trunk, it heals over without bulging out, which is critical for maintaining a smooth taper up the trunk.

My adorable cat wondered exactly what I was doing when I put ...

... this hairball of a plant on the deck table!  Juniperus Squamata, more commonly known as "Blue Juniper"  I've been looking for another conifer, particularly with a blue hue about it so I can put it in one of my blue pots, and unfortunately the Cedars were a little bit out of my pricerange. However, 

One look at this trunk, and the cheaper plant looks mighty fine. 

what I was looking for when I went to the nursery was not the branches of the leaves - both of those can be grown and added later - the trunk was the more important part, as were the roots. Notice here the zig-zag the trunk takes, as well as the taper; good stuff. 

Firstly I cleared away the significant longer growth - the distance between cones (leaves on conifers) was far too much on the new growth that shot outwards, and they were distracting and in the way. Additionally, the thickness of the trunk demanded a substantially smaller overall foliage, so gettin rid of the excess was important.

In order to get a better idea about the trunk and to start thinking about where the 'front' of the tree was going to be,  I cut off the ring of the plastic container and used it like a hairband.

Then I cleared away all the smaller foliage - the small stuff near/growing off of the trunk, so I could get a better look at how the trunk and the major branches interact. Most older trees (elms aside) don't have such foliage and in clearing it away helps to age the tree, as well as helps you visualize what you want to do with the tree.

Took away some of the larger branches to push it further off the ground. 

As you can see I thinned out a lot of the foliage, wired a branch to straighten it and make it longer on one side. I'll pinch back any new growth on the main part of umbrage to force that one branch to grow some more and bush up, making the umbrage a scalene triangle - right now its a little too even.  I need a thinner gauge wire for some of the branches, and once I have that I'll wire some more of the branches as well as do some more pruning.  Overall I'm pretty happy with the outcome!

Russian Olive Dreams

I'm really hopin this one turns out well - i dug it out of the ground yesterday and spent a good 3 hours today rootpruning, repotting, pruning and then styling a little. 

had a couple problems initially with draining  but got that fixed up and now things are alright, but I don't think i'm going to need to water this one as often as my others, perhaps.

I've not seen anyone use the Russian Olive (Elaeagnus angustifolia) in bonsai (I am, of course, very new to bonsai, so correct me if I'm wrong here) but up here in CT they grow like weeds, and fast. Trees that I saw as whips not 6 years ago are already 20 feet tall! They grow fast, and they can take a lot of abuse; repeated, brutal hackings, boiling water, weed killer ... nothing works.  Additionally, the leaves don't get too big, and I think the tree would respond well to leaf-shrinking techniques, and ultimately become an excellent species for use in bonsai.  They even fruit later on the summer, as well as have a pretty yellow flower in early spring. 

My only concern is how well the species takes to healing, as what I've seen in the wild isnt perhaps the most beautiful thing.  I had to go into the cuts I made today and re trim the bark back because it was flaking out (man, do I need a spherical or concave cutter) 

Tomorrow i go to a nursery to see if I can get one of those two tools and to see if there is any other nursery stock worth purchasing.  Lookin forward to it!

Today's Treasure!

Went a-yamadori-ing today and stumbled (literally) across this beeeauutiful uh... huckleberry? No... not entirely sure about what type of tree this is, but it looks pretty darn old, judging by the two huge rotting trunks, and super-thick roots.  The photos really don't do it justice, but I'm quite pleased with it anyway.  Still, I got about 2 years before things are finished.

Three more trees tomorrow, I hope

Burnsai

Bonsai as I understand it seeks to capture the essence of a tree, illustrating some greater theme by using the tree itself as a medium, as John Naka famously did with his Goshin, which he made to illustrate his grandchildren.  So I've been experimenting with the idea of the human hand in nature, which is so crisply illustrated in the entire art of bonsai - a human takes a tree from nature, to control it and make it look more natural, a miniaturized sample of nature. I find it very amusing in an ironic sort of way. 

These bonsai trees have been burned on purpose. I think that there is a certain amount of beauty in the bleached white bare trunks of trees that perished in a forest fire, something I tried to capture here, as well as making commentary on that ironic human control thing, and perhaps a statment or two on the future of 'nature.' 

One day I'll write up a more concise statement, but I guess thats the general jist of things here. 

A new era

Welp now that I'm home in CT for a little while I've found a little bit of spare time on my hands (woot!) and as a result I've decided to get into some of the other things that interest me aside from concept art and illustration.  Seeing as how I'd like to keep my other blog a little bit more "professional" -- which basically means that I'd like to keep it illustration and concept art, so that potential employers can look and see immediately stuff I'm into without having to go through other stuff. 

So for this blog I'm going to be putting up my Bonsai, Abstract, Ceramic, and Sculptural work, as well as anything else I might be interested in (which could be scientific articles or just random jabberings).

I look forward to updating this as frequently as my other!