How to Keep the Latest Bonsai Design Clearly in Mind

Bonsai design is something you often need to do in bonsai creation. You can draw it on paper, or composite it on a computer. Can't do either? That's fine too, as long as you keep it clearly in mind.

Bonsai creation and bonsai design are distinct from each other and should not be confused; design is design, and creation is creation. However, design and creation are also interconnected and inseparable. In the relationship between bonsai design and bonsai creation, design determines creation, and creation in turn acts upon design; bonsai design occupies the primary, determining position.

Bonsai creation must suit the content of the design. Whatever kind of bonsai design there is, it must have, or necessarily requires, a corresponding creation technique. Therefore, blindly following a pattern mechanically is inadvisable, and focusing on branch techniques while neglecting the overall landscape design is also inadvisable.

In short, when making a bonsai design, you must first consider the operability of the design drawing, and not ignore the actual condition of the trunk just to pursue an effect. To design a bonsai, you should at least have some understanding of the growth characteristics of each kind of material, understand bonsai schools and styles, and understand bonsai creation techniques; do not draw blindly.

Basic principles of bonsai design:

1. Principle of contrast and harmony: In plant landscape design, the tree form, color, lines, texture, proportions, and so on must all have a certain degree of difference and variation, showing the diversity of the plants; at the same time, a certain similarity must be maintained to form a sense of unity, so that it is both lively and harmoniously unified. In design, the technique of contrast is often used to highlight the theme.

2. Principle of balance and stability: On a plane, an appropriate expression of the relationship of light and heavy is balance; on an elevation, an appropriate expression of the relationship of light and heavy is stability.

3. Principle of rhythm and cadence: The regular repetition and intermittently varied change of individual plants in plant arrangement produce cadence in the repetition of sequence, and produce rhythm in the variation of cadence.

4. Principle of proportion and scale: Proportion refers to the appropriate relationship in size among the scenery elements in a garden, including both the proportional relationships of length, width, and height among the parts of the scenery itself, and the proportional relationships among scenery elements, and between the individual and the whole.