justBonsai
Omono
I've been styling back to back to back to back pines at Kouka-en the past few months. It's been great to get lots of experience with them, as less than year prior I barely touched and decandled a black pine for the first time volunteering at the Huntington Gardens. I'm happy to learn and improve my own technique and hope to come back to the states eventually with well rounded knowledge. Bnut is kinda of where I got started with bonsai so I hope I can give back to it. Forgot to take a before on the chokkan white pine but that was a tough project--it was really neglected material with tons of overgrown leggy branches and many near dead ones as well. Wish I had the before on that because visually probably my biggest transformation and maybe my best work given the material I had to start with. I've been pretty transparent with my work, good and bad, as I want to document and showcase my progress:
https://bontsai.com/work/
Generally with styling pines, I pull old needles first, then remove obviously unnecessary branching, and work from bottom up. As pads begin to form you'll be able to discern more easily, what to keep and what to cut. As you finish one pad you balance the next one relative to it so that hopefully when you finish the apex you have a cohesive design with all components of the tree working with each other.
https://bontsai.com/work/
Generally with styling pines, I pull old needles first, then remove obviously unnecessary branching, and work from bottom up. As pads begin to form you'll be able to discern more easily, what to keep and what to cut. As you finish one pad you balance the next one relative to it so that hopefully when you finish the apex you have a cohesive design with all components of the tree working with each other.
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