Catfish,
it normally takes 3 to 5 years to learn how to keep a tree alive/healthy and then another 5 to 10 to understand how to put / get - roots - limbs - branchlets, where they are supposed to be.
If you are lucky, you settle on say 5 trees / shrubs of types that you can work with and inspire you.
For example - Ulmus, Acer, Pinus, and so on and within that group - say 1 type of Elm - say Catlin, one type of Acer - Trident, one type of Pine - say Japanese Black Pine.
Even within this seeming limtation, there are individual qualites, so even say 10 Catlin's will most likely have 10 different personalities.
Even if you only had 50 trees as listed above, you would be learning at such an expanded level, it would take time.
Then you get to the guidelines and how to use them to get something that feels correct/pleasing and may look so natural, as have no suggestion of training.
Probably something like 20 years with an experienced teacher who can create trees that look like what you are after.
Or longer if you are doing it on your own.
You can probably jump some of this if you took a wired frame and built plastercene over it.
Using all the guidelines / rules here.
Observing proportions and taking notes.
Down here it was observed that if you understood the tree, one could draw it into reality.
In other words - drawing -> seedling / cutting / collected stump -> Bonsai tree over so many years.
There is no way to get past ---- experience ---- in order to do Bonsai.
Most waste the 3 to 5 years learning to keep the tree alive, by trying to wire/prune/ carve and do experiments that do nothing to help with learning about HEALTH.
They also seldom purchase/obtain enough trees to experiment on. Instead taking their best tree and more or less killing it.
This is why down here the beginning figure treewise is somewhere around 300 or so efforts.
You can bypass this with strong discipline and a teacher. No experiments on your best trees.
AND this is why, most give up on bonsai or end up with so so trees.
It is all very similar to when one goes to an Atelier / Studio school and just does what one is told to do, saving the personality for private attempts at home. Shown cautiously to the teacher.
Good Day.
Anthony