Friday, December 7, 2012

Bonsai Academy in Puerto Rico #4

For the demo I had tow options. One was a buttonwood and the other what they called 'oak' of some kind. It is certainly not from the quercus family, but a tropical species. I had asked for an indigenous broadleaved tree. Too many masters have shown them how to design a conifer while they have none on that island. And too many masters have shown how to make a broadleaved tree look like a pine tree or like a juniper that desperately wants to look like a pine tree. Anyway, I always stress the point that the alternative is to create something that looks like a real tree.
A problem with such demos is that broadleaved trees after fist styling usually don't look encouraging at all. Another problem is that much time is wasted with boring wiring. So I solved th first problem by talking over it and showing a virtual in the end. I try to make my demos as entertaining and as educational as possible. While the tree was fully wired (thank you very much my rasta man!) I gave them Plato's cave analogy.
































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