scotts pine raw material - have a virtual play

Hi all,

here is a fairly old scotts pine I managed to buy while doing a demonstaration at a local bonsai club 2 weeks ago. it was 3 feet taller and 2 feet wider at the meeting so i rough pruned the strong long extension growth. It has been growing in plastic seed trays for many many years, but has been repotted from time to time so health is good.

i bought it planning to do a 'pavel' on it as i havent got a domed top pine with a dropping branch and it is a nice style to have one in a collection, it is a pleasing tree style to view as well.

there are many styling options though - it will make inner buds on the bare branches very easily as long as they see sunlight so any virtual or sketch with nice dense pads will actually be possible in the coming years, rather than just a nice dream. feel free to have a play with styling the material and we can make an ibc treego pine






if anyone wants a different camera angle to do a virt from just let me know

have fun, Marcus

one idea
but i find this tree is not easy

i like bunjingi style for the moment....
can you see that?

[img][/img]

thanks Cram,
yes i see it - it is a nice trunk for literati - funny thing but today i worked a different scotts pine as a literati - a triple trunk with long slender trunks- i need to adjust it some more tomorrow though.

i just tried a quick paint using the same trunk angle as the last picture


thanks for the drawing - i keep them in the album with the actual tree pictures

regards Marcus

I'm not great at the whole virtual thing but thought I'd give it a go...

Hi Marcus
first idea


Gretings Pavel

I like the Cram's idea

MMMM first of all, whats a Pavel?

Yes your tree should backbud easely, mine do.
But I would like to see the other pine you are refering to, styled literati.

Peter

landerloos wrote:MMMM first of all, whats a Pavel?

Yes your tree should backbud easely, mine do.
But I would like to see the other pine you are refering to, styled literati.

Peter

haha, a 'pavel' was a slightly tongue in cheek referal to wiring the long branches and bending them all to make the foliage pads appear tighter than they are - this would give us the bonsai image in one weekend. Then there would be the slow route of feeding the tree,pruning & generating inner buds and pruning back to them. -in the past i have done both on the same tree- style it with the long branches, then generate the inner buds and cut back - you start with a nice quick image, cut it away and re-grow, then end up with the proper result in coming years.

i like all these images - they all are possible with this tree - no decision yet, although one appeals quite a bit

here are a few early pics of the pine going down the literati route

start point


wired most of it to start off


reduced a bit


reduced a bit more - current tree - i have a trunk bender to go on left trunk to curve it to the left a little
This is the slow route method on 2 trunks - there are just one or two needle bundles and a row of new buds on 2 trunks - the pads will be grown from just these


where i want it going over the next few years atm! haha


cheers Marcus

Pavel Slovák wrote:Hi Marcus
first ideaGretings Pavel

Pavel, this is a lovely pine tree image, very natural - thanks

Lee - this is just like the pines grow around here - it reminds me of a real tree at falmouth! thankyou.

Marcus

Hello Marcus. I'd like to know the reasoning for this design. In my opinion the triple trunk in this plane is very flat. Your virtual shows the fattest trunk as the shortest as well. I think I would go with a twin trunk and utilise the trunks with the better movement, removing the large relatively straight trunk on the left?

Hi Marcus
I agree with Will. I do not like a strong strain in front of the composition. I guess I also went to two tribes. Or, I turned slightly to the right, a strong strain of modified sharia. Similar elements would try to show two other strains. I hope to understand. The problem of my English.
Gretings Pavel

hi guys, yes i was always aware the short trunk was the thick one but you are both thinking in exactly the same way now - about the material right now as a finished tree and not thinking of it as what it is - a newly styled piece of material that is on a 7-10 year path.

to find a well formed triple trunk and to then style it convincingly is much harder than doing a twin trunk - so chopping a 3 back to 2 is wasting the materials potential - making it more ordinary just to produce the quick fix . I like Pavels solution to lighten the trunk with carving and shari, this will visually reduce the weight of this trunk and make setting the curves in it easier too.

I think what has been missed by you both though is understanding the amount of foliage on trunk 3, and of course how its volume will increase with back buds and ramification - this will have a very major effect on thickening trunk 3, especially as the other trunks have such a tiny amount of foliage now - they will visually thicken no more for a long long time.

This tree may even develop beyond literati and become my first and only true bunjin - each trunk only retaining the one branch that keeps it alive - it has the ability to carry this style off - but for now i like the idea of a gentle shari on the thick trunk, in time a similar area on the other trunks, and much growth directed to the thinner trunk so it fattens - plus it is easy to swell the trunk even more with the verticle wires.

thanks for taking the time to look at the tree guys,

regards Marcus

i see something like this with this tree
but maybe without the ugly jin i made
[img][/img]

Hi Cram
Your first draft is brilliant for me. I think it is not necessary to think further.
The second drawing is very good, but I'd rather be a dominant jin.
Your thoughts and drawings are very inspirational.
Gretings Pavel

marcus watts wrote:

landerloos wrote:MMMM first of all, whats a Pavel?

Yes your tree should backbud easely, mine do.
But I would like to see the other pine you are refering to, styled literati.

Peter

haha, a 'pavel' was a slightly tongue in cheek referal to wiring the long branches and bending them all to make the foliage pads appear tighter than they are - this would give us the bonsai image in one weekend. Then there would be the slow route of feeding the tree,pruning & generating inner buds and pruning back to them. -in the past i have done both on the same tree- style it with the long branches, then generate the inner buds and cut back - you start with a nice quick image, cut it away and re-grow, then end up with the proper result in coming years.

Ok Marcus, one question for you, why you want a quick result?
I do it the long term, get buds let them grow and cut and so on, I believe this is the way forward, wiring trees into crazy bends is not natural and I geuss damaging the trees health aswell.
Dont get me wrong I done the spagetti to, but the trees respond better by needleplukking and cutting rather then bending. (does it make sense to you)
Also my ame is not a quick result but healthy natural trees (as possible in the japanese aproache )

Peter

marcus watts wrote:hi guys, yes i was always aware the short trunk was the thick one but you are both thinking in exactly the same way now - about the material right now as a finished tree and not thinking of it as what it is - a newly styled piece of material that is on a 7-10 year path.

to find a well formed triple trunk and to then style it convincingly is much harder than doing a twin trunk - so chopping a 3 back to 2 is wasting the materials potential - making it more ordinary just to produce the quick fix . I like Pavels solution to lighten the trunk with carving and shari, this will visually reduce the weight of this trunk and make setting the curves in it easier too.

I think what has been missed by you both though is understanding the amount of foliage on trunk 3, and of course how its volume will increase with back buds and ramification - this will have a very major effect on thickening trunk 3, especially as the other trunks have such a tiny amount of foliage now - they will visually thicken no more for a long long time.

This tree may even develop beyond literati and become my first and only true bunjin - each trunk only retaining the one branch that keeps it alive - it has the ability to carry this style off - but for now i like the idea of a gentle shari on the thick trunk, in time a similar area on the other trunks, and much growth directed to the thinner trunk so it fattens - plus it is easy to swell the trunk even more with the verticle wires.

thanks for taking the time to look at the tree guys,

regards Marcus

Sorry Marcus but I think you misunderstand my point. I agree that a triple trunk is rare and should be preserved but only if it's in harmony with the rest of the design. As you have added no movement to the fat trunk initially, I fail to see how it will play a part in the design long term. In the future this will only get worse and will be difficult to add interest. I am very much looking towards a long term goal with my trees and any advice that I give on others.
Sebatien's sketch is similar to what I was suggesting and is the way I would go with material like this.

[quote="landerloos"Ok Marcus, one question for you, why you want a quick result?
Peter[/quote]

Hi Peter i think you totally mis-understand me - i dont do the trees for the quick result and certainly didnt say i was going for a quick one here as it shows when the trees are seen for real. I think you have missed the joke that was being made (others understood it straight away but it may not translate as a joke maybe) about sticking a pine in a finished image in one day rather than taking the slow road to a better tree.- it is linked to other threads, not this one.

i actually believe the best way to get the result can be a bit of both methods though- style the initial outline where possible as this preserves many needle clusters - this keeps the tree strong and we all know they are very easy to bud back when pruned properly, so you get a nice image, then you take time to improve it - no part of using this method is aiming for a quick result though !

the perfect example is the original 'literati' material, it had plenty of branches that could have been formed into 'cheating' domed pads from the start, but lots are pruned right back to just one needle cluster and 2 or 3 buds - then the eventual pad will start with just one branch as it should, not 10 or 12 coiled up under the foliage.

cheers Marcus

Ok Marcus didnt see the joke, for that I am sorry, perhaps because I am not english

Peter

hi Will,

by one of the original pictures of the material i said i have a trunk bending jack to try and add movement to the straight trunk, adding curves to the left i think it says. - in reality it does need a bit more than a curve to the left though but i do understand your thinking exactly that in the present form the 3rd trunk is wrong.

i think I try to approach a piece of yamadori slightly differently to an ordinary field grown or import tree (certainly with more patience). Nature formed the material as we see it, so I try to use the main elements rather than reduce them too soon. It is down to us to try all the techniques available to extract a convincing triple trunk from the pine rather than go with the twin too quickly. while doing this the rest of the tree will carry on developing at the same speed too, so it wont effect the time scale if we do end up jinning the entire trunk in years to come.

i have just spent an hour looking at as many bunjin pine pictures, multi trunk & clump literati as i could and now have a clear plan involving a trunk splitter, some wire, some raffia maybe and a bit more pruning !

Much thanks to Will, Cram and Pavel for your thoughts, experience and advice

i'm looking at crams excelent picture for part of the design, but with the view to splitting the fatter trunk into a thin live tree and a jin - and from the pleasure i just had from looking at all the literati pictures I am going to use crams first sketch for the first pine tree material. - i'm looking forward to this - from none to two literati pines

thanks again. marcus

A few pics will appear i'm sure as work continues

landerloos wrote:Ok Marcus didnt see the joke, for that I am sorry, perhaps because I am not english

Peter

hi Peter, thats fine. i guessed as much - an english sense of humour can be very strange !!! - especially mine!

i think it is a total miracle sometimes we manage so well on here with all the different cultures and people - i would be very very lost on a foreign forum

cheers Marcus

i had a couple of spare hours this evening so had a go at splitting the fatter trunk - i'm happy with the initial shape it ended up and think its certainly worth persuing the 3 trunk bunjin design.



there are a few little curves to add here and there, and lots of buds to encourage

cheers

Hi Marcus
I think a very good job.
Pavel

That looks much better now! I do have one question though - I'm comparing your last photo of the tree (your post #3, 4th image) with this one - is one partially a virt? In the previous image it looked like there were only 2 needle clusters on the middle trunk, now there are more...



Chris

thanks pavel, yes i'm very happy.

hi coh,pines grow fast in Cornwall

haha. seriously tho in the earlier pic there was a little branch on the middle trunk sticking out backwards. the angle was wrong but it had got dark outside so it was shaded out as there was no time to take another picture. This final picture is the tree right now - the same as the picture above - here is the large raw image. (had to work inside yesterday - very wet and windy!)



now for a pot for the spring.................

cram wrote:one idea
but i find this tree is not easy

i like bunjingi style for the moment....
can you see that?

[img][/img]

Hi Cram, I coukld see it and i liked it, here is the tree after first styling - in time the shari will continue to the very top to an apex jin - and lots of back buds to stimulate !



thanks once again -

marcus