Symmetery vs. Visual Balance by Steve Moore

Good explanation!

Regards
Emil

Good explanation between the two Steve.Your statements about visual balance are spot on. However I will argue your statements about symmetry as it applies to bonsai.

Based on the common excepted fact that we "ALL" strive to recreate an ancient tree from nature when we style and grow a bonsai. I would dare argue that recreating that image has very little to do with personal taste in symmetry and everything to do with a person's level of skill and artistic talent.

Mother nature does not create symmetrical objects except possibly for waves on the ocean or ridges on the sand in a desert. If you look at a tree in nature untouched by man I believe you would be hard pressed to find a tree that is truly symmetrical.

The challenge to a practitioner of bonsai is to create a asymmetrical tree while keeping visual balance.

Hello everybody

May I put two "basic rules" of how to achieve that "visual (feeling) balance" to this discussion.
You don't have to follow the mathematic rules....just read it....so you than will find some kind of a "visual starting point" in what you see. Thats already enough...the rest (the fine tuning) can be done by your feeling.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_ratio

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_of_thirds

Kind regards
Martin

.....as I'm german, my english might be not to well and missing of some kind of politeness....
Me and babelfisch are sorry for that.

Tachigi wrote:... I would are argue that recreating that image has very little to do with personal taste in symmetry and everything to do with a person's level of skill and artistic talent.
If you look at a tree in nature untouched by man I believe you would be hard pressed to find a tree that is truly symmetrical. ...The challenge to a practitioner of bonsai is to create an asymmetrical tree while keeping visual balance.

I'm not sure we disagree, Tom.

Yes, achieving a good, believable, pleasing image of a tree is a matter of skill and talent. Yes, there is very little symmetry to be found in Nature -- perfect symmetry, anyway. Let me put it that objects in nature, and bonsai, vary in degree of symmetry.

What I was trying to say is that more symmetrical bonsai are not artistically superior to less symmetrical ones, all else being equal; nor is the reverse true. Usually artists have their preferences for degree of symmetry in their art; and those are simply preferences.

Personally I don't care for a lot of symmetry; it bores me fairly quickly. That's one reason I don't have any formal upright bonsai. I do, on the other hand, have to be careful that I don't turn everything into a semi-cascade! But that's preference, not value judgment.

An unbalanced bonsai, however, is not good art, no matter how well it may be executed in other respects!

Steve...so what I think we differ on is the literal translation of symmetry. For me its either symmetrical or its not by definition ( see below). This is where I think the term visual balance gets confused and construed as symmetry.

Tom ... we may disagree less than you think... maybe another way to say what I'm thinking is that one design can be further from perfect symmetry than another.

Maybe that's a better way to say it -- I'll have to think on that bit.