Design and Critique #11 – Olive

olive bonsai tree on display

Taper:

Part of what makes this tree amazing is the taper from bottom to top. The curvature of the trunk and main branching also adds to create fantastic bones on this olive. Many olive bonsai trees are created from stumps or large cuttings with significant amounts of deadwood. Those olive trees don’t have what this one does. The taper with a significant lack of any visible scarring is rare to see with olive bonsai trees.

Balance:

There is a few interesting things going on with the balance of this tree. If you draw a line vertically from the center of the trunk, you’ll see that there is a significant amount of foliage and weight on the left. This is balance by the flow of the silhouette going from the top right to bottom left, and balanced once again by the placement of the tree in the pot. The positioning helps to center the overall feel of the tree. If it was planting directly in the center it would feel heavy on the left side. This off center placement of trees is common in bonsai, but if you ignore it yourself, you’ll notice that it just doesn’t look right.

Comments:

I’d really like the bottom left portion to be thinned out a little more, but it may also be the viewing angle.

I just freaking love this olive, you just don’t find many like it.

You can tell almost all of the branches were wired at one point, which gives this tree a very aesthetically pleasing curvature to the primary, secondary, and tertiary branches.

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