Secrets of Literati style

Welcome to a new episode of Toral School Online. In this time of reporting madness I will take a break and style a special small tree, not this one in the Toconoma behind me, but the tree at the other side of the shop. But before I move to the tree at the opposite side of the shop, I want to thank Bill. Bill pressed the super thanks button below the previous video, and because of you Bill I got a couple of much needed rolls of wire. Thank you again. If you want to support our channel and our work, you are also invited to press that button. Thank you. Now back to the work, let's move to the tree at the other side of the shop. So this is Scott's pine, which was laying around the garden for quite a while, but nobody wants it, so I decided to turn it into a nice bonsai. The tree has a thin trunk, but with a lot of character and especially with a lot of movement, so I decided to make it into the literati bonsai. Literati style is not to everybody's taste. Usually one needs a lot of experiences to appreciate the trees with long thin trunks and small crowns. But in the same time the literati style is the most expressive one, and if you want, the most freestyle one. First I will cut this branch off to reveal the trunk even more. And next I will make a gene out of this dead branch. Now the plan is to bring this branch up, but because there is a piece of dead wood already on the branch, it will cause a little bit of problem. In order to protect the branch from breaking, I put the raffia on this spot, and because I want to bend the branch on exact spot above the dead wood, I will use this hook, this special tool. From raw Yamadori to this elegant tree. After first styling, of course, this is just a skeleton, a silhouette of future bonsai. But the first step is done. Thanks for watching!