Bonsai Rules

The bonsai styles page can help.
Bonsai rules. The other side is the front. The classic quip of the famous japanese american bonsai artist john naka is if you can t find a front find the back. It should taper gradually as it rises from the pot towards the apex. Water from above not by submerging the bonsai this will prevent the buildup of salts.
Obviously all the textbook conventions for bonsai are derived from fundamental concepts of artistry and aesthetic principals of visual art. Height should be six times the caliper of the trunk. Style of the pot should match the. Bonsai potting medium lacks the nutrients the plants need.
Trunk should lean slightly toward the. With bonsai the leaning style should grow at an angle of about 60 80 degrees relative to the ground. Grey branches can be removed. Remove most of the fines from any soil mix using only coarse particles.
No crossing branches or branches that cross the trunk. A good bonsai must have an impressive and characterful trunk. An acidic fertilizer given every two weeks until the azalea. The rules have to be loosened to create one such bonsai that conforms to the characteristic features of hardwoods or to avoid making it look so much like a conifer feb.
Training a bonsai with a front in mind is simply doing everything possible to reveal and maximize its best visual qualities. No eye poking branches pointed directly at viewer. A few guidelines are shown in the image below but deciding on the future design of your tree is a creative process not necessarily bound by rules. Among the aesthetic principals of visual art are line form color texture composition dimension perspective and balance.
Pruning a bonsai tree illustration. Graham potter demonstrates how this works in practice with a weird and completely unique. As a result of the wind blowing in one dominant direction or when a tree grows in the shadow and must bend toward the sun the tree will lean in one direction. Trying to encompass what nature hands us is a part of the magic of creating bonsai trees from yamadori.
Increase humidity by using a tray of pebbles and or water or by keeping the area under the bench wet.