Japanese Larch first styling

Since we have been having a Larch fest on the blog ... you can read the whole post here

Awhile back we purchased a Larch from WeeTree ... it arrived in Feb and was allowed to grow...
this weekend I took after it with wire, pruners and the die grinder and gave it its first styling ...

Before


After


It's not perfect .... and has a long way to go.... needs a new pot of course .... but I think it has potential.....

in the coming sessions the deadwood will be refined more to give it more depth and appeal ....

anyways please feel free to comment and critique ..... always love hearing other people's ideas !

Hi

I like the naturalistic feel of a mountain larch image, you've created. I'll have to wait for a winter image to comment on the styling job per se.

I am not so sure about the large deadwood trunk, though: It's a bit fallic..erh... very spirited and as a (massive) focus point - intented or not - it draws attention away from the foliage. You mention that you are going to perform some refinement carving etc., which would possibly solve this problem. However, I would hollow it together with some advanced carving techniques a la Will Baddeley or Kevin Wilson...or perhabs you feel like trying out the sandblasting method recently presented by Tony Tickle (among others). My point is, to carve paper thin wedges and whirls inside the hollowed trunk to make it really stand out as an ancient larch.

After this is done I would reconsider the planting angle. The tree appears to be slightly off balance, though it could be just the photo!?.

Thanks for showing

/Loke Emil

Nice! One could contemplate grafting on roots at the conjuncture of the minor and major trunk--that would really be a dynamic composition---or just continue it as is---with maybe some strategic branch grafts.

Glad you got rid of that tuning fork <g>.

Nice job.

@Loke ... thank you for the suggestions... I totally agree with you... this initial work was done with a 3/8" corebox router bit (the staple carving bit at Elandan)... when I say "do some refinement" I kind of mean what you are suggesting.... I do however think that I will need to go farther and do more than I had originally anticipated ....

I felt concerned about the same things you are mentioning that it might detract from the rest of the tree ... as for the winter image ... that will certainly need a little more work and a few years to develop ... should be a really nice tree in a 3yrs (larch grow fast here)

so there is another side to this tree.... with very little deadwood..... lets see what people think of this side...



This is another possible change... to completely give up on the idea of having the deadwood stump and use this wider image that I love just as much ...... OR decide to put it in a round pot and enjoy it from both sides :p

nice change

I like the 2nd view better but with a shorter right branch.