tanuki...a good learning experience?

oh well...you re kind...thank you
i am sure you can do it if you want it
but i have also a lot of spiritual masters...and as you i d really like to reach there level one day
as long i take pleasure to do it..time will tell

well a very little one...just for fun
much less powerfull of course...
(..and i think i have to reduce this long endless jin)
but only two years...
so it will be maybe something in two more years


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two last works ..cleaning ...wiring and restyling
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the other one
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cram wrote:
the other one

I love this!

Poink88 wrote:

cram wrote:
the other one

I love this!

Ill second this.

hi cram, i have just been looking at your tunuki {wrap around} creations and i have to say that i think they are brilliant,so creative and convincing you must get a lot of pleasure out of doing them.not accepted as real bonsai, and rightly so i suppose, but i do belive that they deserve some place of their own in the bonsai world and i would bet that there must be some great examples of this art form out there as you have shown. thanks for the pictures and keep up the good work , my photo is of a procumbans juniper attached to a peice of scots pine root about four and a half years in the making, not the real thing ,no, but i love it. bob hill.

Hi everyone,
I find it interesting when people say a tanuki is not a bonsai as they certainly are, and a good tanuki will take as much effort, hard work and tecnique as any other tree. The only thing holding back many examples is the lack of maturity at the moment as the trees used are mostly young thin whips. Many of these trees will develop over the coming years into magnificent trees - epsecially if they are planted in the ground first and not a pot.

I'm forming one at the moment by taking one of my oldest large juniper bonsai and attaching it to an even larger piece of juniper wood. Because the bonsai is too old and thick to bend I have carved the dead wood to take the curves in the living trunk. Then i realised what lets down most tanuki is the one single live vein and large dead trunk so I am going to add at least one or two more. These need to be exactly the same foliage though so 2 air-layers will be started soon on longer branches of the main tree so everything matches once they too are added to the dead trunk.

The only time a tanuki creation is not a proper one is when it sits by a real yamadori and the two are compared. In coming years onlookers will not be able to tell some of the better ones though, only through the owners honesty !

some very promicing trees here though - i like !

cheers Marcus

cram wrote:
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This one has really great potential as a fine literati.

Just wondering where all the great deadwood came from?

woaaa
thanks to all of you and your very kind comments
i really also think some of tanukis will become very nice old trees
(bob...yours is very nice....procumbens is really good for tanuki)

actually it depend a lot of what you are waiting from bonsai passion
personnaly it is making wiring ..shaping
and tanuki is a very good playground for this
no matter if i ll can not expose them in exhibitions

i collect the deadwoods in all the mountains around my house
even before i made some tanukis
i ve collected tons of them without knowing what i will do with
now i have a lot of material to do but when i see a nice one i still take it

at a moment i wanted to sell some ...but i still dont know how to pack them ...so i leave the idea

anyway...if you have a way to do it...i can send some ...no problem

HI all;

This morning i took some time out to repot my Tanuki Juniper today into a long oval pot. It was in a small plastic container that i bought it in 2yrs ago. Roots we trimmed on purchase, and tree was connected to the Juniper drift wood last year, and left to grow on. During repot i'd forgotten that i had trimmed the roots reasonably flat so fitting it into this pot was very easy. Combed out and lightly trimmed the root will has lots of room to grow, before i can develop some further shape and branch structure.

Hope you like it. Criticism welcome........ and yes it is a great learning experience. Just getting the whip to follow the line of the trunk was painful enough!!







Cheers
Bryan

Hi to all, and thank you to all for this fascinating thread. I've been wanting to try my hand, in fact I tried one about five years ago, enough to see I didn't have a clue how to proceed. So I've been studying on it since, gathering knowledge where I can, followed this thread with a keen eye, and much appreciation.

Meanwhile, I never tire in my continuing search for potential tanuki deadwood. I'm out in the forest quite often, and pick up and haul home anything that looks promising. Old logging sites are good picking grounds where I find a lot of Pacific Yew (Taxus brevifolia) that was uprooted as much as fifty years ago and some as recent as last year. They are the roots and a piece of trunk and some branches, perfect for tanuki projects.

Another great collection site in up in the mountain lakes. All types of root wads wash up into rocky pockets along the shores. The constant action rolls and tosses and they end up looking sandblasted, with deep ridges, just like you might spend several days with a dremel to create, al natural'. All for the price of getting there and back.

For the price of shipping I would be very pleased to share some of these finds with any interested persons. I have collected quite a few yew, western red cedar, sugar pine and some I'm not sure what.

The first thing I realized was that the trees must be bonsai ready and up to size before you commit them to the process. I began some trees five years back that I think are now fit to begin working. One is a Monterey Cypress I've grown from a sapling that's now a six foot tall whip with almost a two inch trunk and lots of branches from bottom to top.

I see predominately coniferous tanuki, but I've got my heart set on a hawthorn, so I gathered some seedlings (Crataegus monogyna) and planted them into a shady area. In two years they shot up six feet with half inch trunks, lots of branches to work with. Maybe this year I can have another go at it. Thank you all for so much input and fascinating examples to study on. With much Appreciation, Rick

cram wrote:

at a moment i wanted to sell some ...but i still dont know how to pack them ...so i leave the idea

anyway...if you have a way to do it...i can send some ...no problem

Hi again.
I am using one of my big old juniper trees as tanuki experiment at the moment but there is very poor dead wood to find in south west england! I would be very interested in buying a suitable piece of mountain deadwood as the piece of juniper dead wood i have is very young and not good with the tree.

I have friends in France (limogue) where the piece could be sent too as I am visiting them this summer, and again in October if you would be happy to post within France. Or i am happy to pay the postage to Uk if you could wrap the deadwood in bubble plastic etc.

I will add a few pictures of the tree if you are happy to select a piece of wood from your collection as it is quite a large and old tree, but with a thin trunk (you drew a design in the past)

Thanks again Marcus

a great experience

hi marcus, you will have to take a trip up to scotland,its everywhere bob hill.

An impressive pile of litter Bob, certainly some good pickings in there. The pieces I find in the backwashes of the mountain lakes are mostly rootwads from cut trees that wash into the lake. They float around for years until they make their way up into the back corners where they are pummeled on the rocky shores.

After some time they end up looking like these two pieces of Western Red Cedar (Thuja plicata)

no 1

no. 2

Wish I had more pics to share. Lots of snow up there now, but when I can I'll get some pics from the lakes. Being deadwood I don't think there is any international restriction other than cost of shipping, but most of the washed out pieces are very light weight. The yew pieces are heavy, but are exceptional when cleaned up. The contrasting white sapwood and the red heartwood is beautiful and the wood is very durable, the heartwood and roots lasts for decades on the forest floor.

I'm not trying to sell anything, I would only like to share from an abundant natural source that I am blessed to have access to. Rick

bob hill wrote:hi marcus, you will have to take a trip up to scotland,its everywhere bob hill.

haha, yes Bob I will by the look of it.................or I'd love someone to say "here is my unfortunately dead 200 year old needle juniper, you may as well put the trunk to good use "

It does look like i need to scour the wilder parts of the uk - where's my walking boots............

cheers Marcus

wow ..cool pot vev!


and you know i love your trees...
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well marcus...
two possibilities
you send me your adress in uk...and i send you a little(but nice) wood...for free(except the shipping )
or you come in my house if you come close to nice or cannes...and i will sell you a big bloody one
we can make the twice also

cram wrote:well marcus...
two possibilities
you send me your adress in uk...and i send you a little(but nice) wood...for free(except the shipping )
or you come in my house if you come close to nice or cannes...and i will sell you a big bloody one
we can make the twice also

hi,
Fantastic - Lets do both
I'll send you my address and make a plan to travel down to South of France later in the year - i could bring the juniper and we can start the tanuki !

thanks again

Marcus

cram wrote:
or you come in my house if you come close to nice or cannes...and i will sell you a big bloody one
we can make the twice also

A Nice and Cannes, lots of old childhood and teen age memories there! Just the other day me and the wife were looking at old slides made during the holidays that I spent there with my family during the 70ties and 80ties. I remember well, on board the Sun Express train from Roosendaal (Holland) and the next day we got off it again at our destination "Boulouris-sur-mer" in the France reviera! I kissed my first girl there, Silvie! France of course! And my live would never be the same again!
Cheers,
Hans van Meer.

Here are 2 of my tanuki
Xuan

very nice xuan le!!
they seems to be quiet big...
since how long do you work them?

Thanks cram but they are not as beautiful as yours I love your works, the first tree I really don't remember exactly how many years but quite sometime the second one is a gift from my friends.

Xuan

up for this one
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Another beautiful one Cram.

Xuan

It's been fun looking at all these tanuki coming out of the closet!

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