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Practice: The Mental Workout

In the previous article we looked into the Preparation for Practice. To get better as a bonsai artist you need to establish a practice, and do it right. The core of this practice is the Mental Workout.

When you push yourself past your comfort zone in a physical workout, you body adapts and becomes stronger. The same is true of a mental workout. When you push past your mental comfort zone, your mind will adapt and become smarter. In short, you will become a better artist.

Be prepared. The experience will be frustrating. You will feel awkward, clumsy and incapable. That’s okay. In fact, that is what you want to feel. That’s the feeling of your brain working hard to learn something new. Embrace that feeling and seek it out when you study.

To make someone stronger, an athlete needs resistance. You put weight onto a barbell, run distance a little faster, or pulls through water with your arms. Muscles, tendons and bones are overwhelmed, and they grow stronger to adapt. The creative centers of your brain work the same way. They need tools of resistance to adapt and grow. The tools of resistance for a bonsai artist are trees and other bonsai artists. Now we know what are tools are, this is how we use them.

Create a Library: Start creating a library of trees that appeal to you. This can be paintings, design, drawings and photography. You can do this online using pinterest or keep a series of folders. Whatever inspires you. Take some time and look carefully at what appeals to you about these images and what you would like to incorporate into your own skill set.

Identify Skills: Search websites and books for inspiration. Start to list the skills and stuff you want to do. Getting critiques from other artists will also give some ideas for skills to study. I keep records online using word and in an excel spreadsheet, but you can put yours on paper or anywhere that’s convenient.

Choose a Focus: Choose one skill you would like to study. This will be the focus of your practice. If you are starting out, I recommend you choose a skill that involves construction like wiring, trimming, and design. My focus for this set of articles is primarily on craftsmanship, so I’ll constrain most of my commentary to those three areas of emphasis. For more experienced artists, you can start drilling skills that expand your horticultural and maintenance catalog like watering, disease management.
Make this the only focus of every study session for the time being. Do not plan what comes next. You are not trying to get anywhere. You are not working towards a milestone. You want your focus to be on the work at hand. Not on some future point.

Choose a Drill: I’m going to try and provide more drill ideas in the future. For now, here are some ideas to get you started. Remember, you are working on one skill, so just choose one of these drills for now

Wiring:
Start with a loose branch or a simple practice tree in your collection. Warm Up to see how you would wire the branch and make the transition to smaller wire as you move away from the trunk. Wire it slowly and with care. Take another branch and wire it slowly with care. Compare the two. Look at the transitions, spacing, crossings, size of wire used. How do they compare in orderliness? Where are the most complex transitions? Take another two branches. Go to workshops and help others wire their trees. My teacher has challenged me to wire a tree every day for 28 consecutive days. During this challenge I got better and my teacher saw it.
Composition Study:
Choose a style of bonsai you like. This can be from your library, landscape, book, photograph or even a bonsai in a collection. . With a large marker, sketch out the structure of the images as simply as possible. Use big, broad strokes – no detail. Just identify the major areas of focus and flow of the tree. What does this style or tree do that is new to you? Identify relationships with branches. Identify the triangles. What are some generalizations you can make about how this style arranges itself?

Take Note: The point of studying trees, bonsai and the work of other artists is to understand the general rules that make a bonsai work. Take notes during your mental workout. Ask questions about why things are the way they are. You could read about these rules in a book, and listen to them in a lecture, but when you come to understand them through your own effort and searching, your wisdom will be far deeper

This is what makes the Mental Workout so powerful.

You are determining the course of your artistic journey. You are the one setting the curriculum and writing the rules. You have the opportunity to develop your unique artistic voice, and stand out from the crowd. It takes work, but once you develop the tools you can really start getting creative

Next let's discover that Practicing is an Art. Read More