How to Make a Mountain Stone Bonsai: Cloud Peak in the Evening Glow

  The creative theme is to express the beauty of mountain peaks at sunset, recreating the beauty of nature's elegant peaks glowing in the light, highlighting the beautiful mountain scenery under the slanting rays of the setting sun, and achieving the artistic effect of layered ridges in verdant green and charming scenery.

  Choose five-colored axe-cut stone with alternating red and yellow colors as the creative material to fully express the beauty of the afterglow of the setting sun and soft light and shadow, thereby achieving the artistic realm of “the scenery matching its name, and emotion blending with scenery.”

  Use a white marble basin as the production pot, which can create a distinct contrast between the horizontal lines of the shallow basin and the vertical lines of the upper mountain peaks, thereby further highlighting the main landscape; the application of the shallow basin serves to set off the upper landscape.

  Cut the selected five-colored axe-cut stone into stones of varying sizes and carry out preliminary carving on them. Since five-colored axe-cut stone is shale, the texture-stroke method used for carving it is mostly the axe-cut texture-stroke method, which can reasonably utilize the original texture of the stone material and, on the other hand, better highlight the steep and precipitous momentum of the mountain peaks.

  Place the largest piece of mountain stone as the main peak of the main mountain at about 1/3 of the way from the left side of the basin, insert small stones at the bottom of the mountain stone, and adjust the shape of the mountain stone so that the texture of the main peak is perpendicular to the basin surface and its overall trend faces the right side. In the creation of mountain stone bonsai, the shape and trend of the main peak play a leading role overall. During processing, special attention should be paid to the shape and texture strokes of the main peak, and in application it should be “appropriate and with ‘form’ and ‘quality’ unified.”

  Add corresponding accompanying peaks around the front, back, left, and right of the main peak of the main mountain. Pay attention to the height, size, thickness, and texture variations of the selected accompanying peaks, so that they are rich in variation on the basis of the overall unified texture (axe-cut texture strokes). Note that their height and size variations should differ from the various peaks of the main mountain, but their mountain trend direction should echo the main mountain, achieving “mutual gazing with affection,” so that viewers have a visual sense of gradually receding into the distance in focal perspective.

  (Excerpted from Issue 2, 2016, Chen Wenchao, Wang Weijun, Huang Weirong)