Interview with Bonsai Drawing Instructor, Tina Thieme Brown

How an artist achieves mindfulness, captures the natural world by drawing among bonsai trees

While walking through our Museum’s collections, you’ll observe the sun glinting off bonsai pots or the turmoil of greens and yellows that mix to create each tree’s flawless color with your own eyes. But how do you capture those intricate details with pencils and paper? 

We spoke with nature artist Tina Thieme Brown about her experiences drawing while immersed in natural settings and how she brings that background to her drawing class at the Museum. 

Thieme Brown received a Master of Fine Arts and Master of Liberal Studies from Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. She spent a great deal of time with the school’s science department, researching and asking questions about rainforests and natural habitats. 

Her love of nature and her sketches became even more pronounced during her time volunteering to clean sea otters after the Exxon Valdez oil spill in 1989. Thieme Brown filled up her sketchbooks with drawings of the otters and other natural features of the Alaskan coastline.

“I fell in love with the intricacies and the richness and the habitats and being surrounded by scientists and drawing,” she said. “I’m stimulated by sketchbook research experience.

Thieme Brown has also worked on several books that align with her passion for illustrating the outdoors, including Sugarloaf: The Mountain’s History, Geology and Natural Lore and An Illustrated Guide to Eastern Woodland Wildflowers and Trees. 

“I feel the most passionate when I’m able to investigate a habitat, discover it, study it and then draw it,” she said. 

Drawing at the Museum

Thieme Brown begins each of her workshops at the Museum with a stroll through the Cryptomeria Walk. The class sits on a stone ledge to discuss with her the materials each participant brought, as well as warm-up techniques the class should utilize before drawing. 

“The walkway has a very calming, cooling effect on people,” Thieme Brown said. “They get so focused, they don’t even notice people walking by them.”

Students in Thieme Brown's class learn to build upon each color they use in their drawing to ensure they can capture all of the texture and vibrant energy each tree offers. The class can also spread out and choose a few trees from inside the Museum they would like to focus on during the class. 

Thieme Brown said that often she teaches people who have never drawn before. She weaves through the class, suggesting adjustments participants can make to mimic their tree’s form more clearly on their page.

“It’s a gentle back and forth. Students will come around and look at what I’m talking about with someone else, so there’s a lot of collaboration,” Thieme Brown said.

“They’re pretty excited when they start seeing the trees show up on their sketchbook page.”

Connecting Nature with Art

Thieme Brown maintains that even if someone is not an experienced artist, staying present with an object and exploring its dimensions and figure with your pen and paper can facilitate a meditative mindset.

“It’s a really wonderful way to connect with what’s happening in nature at a point in time.”

Thieme Brown’s session allows participants to relax without interruption – she encourages people to turn off their cellphones.

“We are so aware of the history and the magnificence of these beautifully designed gardens and beautifully cultivated bonsai trees,” she said. “There’s so much there that is rich visually that moving through that space slows people down automatically.”

Budding artists hoping to develop their illustrating techniques can sign up for Brown’s class at the Museum here. Drawing From Bonsai will be held from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Sept. 14th. Share your drawings from Tina’s class with us on Instagram or Facebook – we can’t wait to see your work! 

HISTORICAL TREE SPOTLIGHT: Bald Cypress

From the cliffs of San Diego to the Gulf Coast, cypress trees can be found throughout the United States. But how did this bald cypress, or Taxodium distichum, end up in a bonsai museum? 

The late Vaughn Banting, a former National Bonsai Foundation board member, a former director of the American Bonsai Society and a former director and vice president of Bonsai Clubs International, donated the tree to the Museum in 2000. 

Banting was no stranger to plant care and garden design. His history with trees dates back to his childhood when he worked on bonsai at his family's plant nursery in New Orleans. A veteran of the Vietnam War, he studied horticulture and landscape architecture at Louisiana State University. After returning home he started a horticultural service company and founded the Greater New Orleans Bonsai Society. 

Banting’s cypress tree began as nursery stock, which is a plant that has been cultivated from a seedling or cutting and grown in a container, according to Museum curator Michael James. The stock is then planted into the landscape to grow into a full-sized tree or shrub. This particular cypress was instead destined to become a bonsai and has been in training in a pot since 1972. 

The cypress in 1976 in its first form, the formal upright.

The bald cypress, a deciduous conifer native to the Southeast United States, is often found in swamps where its roots can be fully submerged in water. One would be hard-pressed to find this particular species of cypress growing in Japan or China, because the tree would have to travel to those countries by boat or plane, James said. 

When Vaughn Banting first began training this tree, he aimed for a traditional Japanese formal-upright formation, which is the natural growth habit of young bald cypresses. But he later realized that old bald cypresses are different.

Museum curators and volunteers train the cypress in a flat-top configuration – the same style the tree sported when Banting first gifted the tree to the Museum. According to James, Banting observed the bald cypress’ unique growth habits as they matured at his parent’s nursery, which led him to create the flat-top style. 

Related Reading – Know Your Styles: A Guide to Bonsai Configurations

Banting realized that the flat-top style’s success relies on the positioning and thinning of the upper branches.

“As the trees become old and mature, they lose the triangular silhouette with a sharp apex and wide lower branch spread,” James said. “The lower branches break off over time, and that triangular silhouette of the formal upright style inverts itself. Upper branches then form a broad flat canopy with multiple apices and lower branches hold their foliage close to the trunk.” 

After nearly fifty years of training and three different training stages, Banting’s bald cypress is on display in the Museum’s North American pavilion. The flat-top configuration has become very popular, and the Museum is looking forward to the next innovative bonsai design to come our way.  

National Bonsai & Penjing Museum Enters into Historic “Sister Museum” Relationship with Omiya Bonsai Art Museum in Japan

Photo Credit: Stephen Voss

The National Bonsai & Penjing Museum officially became a Sister Museum to The Omiya Bonsai Art Museum in Saitama, Japan on Monday, Aug. 5th! 

Our Museum was formed in 1976 as the result of Japan’s Bicentennial Gift of 53 masterpiece bonsai. The Omiya Bonsai Art Museum, created in 2010, is located in the famous “Bonsai Village” that has been at the center of bonsai in Japan for almost 100 years.

Many board members and leaders from both museums attended the ceremony, which was held at our Museum in Washington, D.C. Dr. Richard Olsen – Director of the U.S. National Arboretum, which houses our Museum – and The Honorable Hayato Shimizu, Mayor of Saitama, signed the “Sister Museums Declaration.”

Photo Credit: Stephen Voss

Attendees heard remarks from Dr. Olsen, Mayor Shimizu, Felix Laughlin – National Bonsai Foundation Co-President – and Takahiro Shimada, Minister for Communications and Cultural Affairs at the Japanese Embassy. A luncheon in the Exhibits Gallery followed the ceremony, and Dr. Fumiya Taguchi – Manager of The Omiya museum – gave a presentation called “The History of Bonsai in Japan.”

Photo Credit: Stephen Voss

In the advent of their new partnership, the two museums plan to share information about their upcoming educational bonsai exhibits and programs. 

“Both museums hope to help increase awareness and appreciation for the other as premier destinations to experience the art of bonsai at its highest level of creativity and development,” Laughlin said.

Photo Credit: Stephen Voss

Photographing Bonsai with Stephen Voss: An Introduction

As a photographer who now makes a living snapping pictures of some of the world’s most influential figures, Stephen Voss didn’t always know that photography could be more than a hobby. 

Now that he’s an accomplished photographer, Voss wants to share his “tricks of the bonsai photography trade.” He will be writing a monthly blog covering everything from lighting, angles and mindset needed when photographing the trees, beginning with this introductory blog. Sign up for our newsletter and follow us on Facebook and Instagram to never miss one of his entries!

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Voss’ photography journey began while growing up in New Jersey, when he photographed his friends skateboarding and printed the pictures in a self-published magazine called “Skatedork.” 

After graduating from The George Washington University, where he took some black and white darkroom courses, Voss moved from D.C. to Portland, Oregon where he took photos for the city’s weekly paper and cemented his love for photography.

“Coming out of college, I knew I wanted to be a photographer, but I didn’t really have a sense of how that could become a career,” Voss said. “My degree in computer science helped me pay the rent, while I developed my photographic career shooting just about everything you can think of for the paper in Portland.”

The paper’s “on-the-job education” exposed him to many interesting people and situations every day, which he said is one of the most alluring aspects of photography. 

“The experiences made me realize that what I loved most about photography was the way it could serve as an entry point to pursuing my curiosities,” Voss said. 

One of Voss’ first big projects led him to Zhengzhou, China, where a local environmental activist showed Voss multiple villages that had fallen victim to water pollution induced by factories located upstream.

(Voss) Pollution enters the river in Zhengzhou, China.

“I saw empty homes where all the people living there had died from various forms of cancer,” Voss said. “I saw blackish, foul-smelling water coming out of pipes originating from a fertilizer factory, just upstream from where people fished and drew water from wells.”

(Voss) Trash accumulates in the river in Zhengzhou.

News organizations like CNN and BBC that picked up the story featured the photos he took in the villages. Voss said his shoot in Zhengzhou taught him the power and limitations of photography. 

“While the factory eventually stopped polluting the river, it was the work of the activists who effected change, any contribution the photographs made was peripheral at best,” he said. 

Photographing Bonsai

Voss has been visiting The National Bonsai & Penjing Museum since 1998, when he was still a college student. He and his girlfriend, now wife, took the long cab ride from Foggy Bottom to the U.S. National Arboretum to wander through the Museum and marvel at the Capitol Columns, Voss said. 

“When we moved back to D.C. in 2005, we visited the Museum on the morning of our wedding and frequently bring our children there to visit the trees,” he said. 

Voss now frequently brings his children along on his Museum visits. Voss’ son looks through the view finder.

Voss now frequently brings his children along on his Museum visits. Voss’ daughter enjoys the view.

Voss’ first attempt at photographing bonsai stemmed from frustration in his professional work, taking portraits of famous politicians and athletes. He said the work is fast-paced, which is exciting but can also be hectic. Voss said that when he wanted to begin a new personal project, he turned to the trees.

“I may have just a few minutes to try to make a meaningful image of someone before they had to rush off to their next appointment,” he said. “I wanted a subject that would allow me to take my time, and the trees felt like a perfect fit.” 

Voss spent months photographing the trees without thinking much about what he would do with the finished products, and he struggled to find what he could add to the living works of art through his project. 

Voss composing bonsai photos at the National Bonsai & Penjing Museum.

“Sometimes it felt similar to photographing paintings in a museum,” he said. “At some point, I realized I was more interested in trying to portray something of the spirit of the trees, not just a literal representation.”

Early on in his project, Voss debuted a selection of his images to Jack Sustic, who served as the Museum’s curator for 13 years. Voss said Sustic supported his mission to capture the trees’ essence through a camera lens and encouraged him to continue his project. He took about 12,000 images of the Museum’s bonsai collection in one and a half years.

“I knew I had the makings of a book project once I had a selection of 50 or so images that I liked,” he said. 

(Voss) One of Voss’ favorite shots of a red maple, which has been in training since 1974, at the Museum.

Voss then raised money to print the book through a Kickstarter campaign and worked with a design company to lay out the pages. 

“The printing process took quite a long time,” he said. “I only received my first books from the printer in Hong Kong the day before the book release party!”  

After his years of working hard and delving into the world of photographing bonsai, Voss’ book, “In Training, A Book of Bonsai Photos,” is now widely circulated. You can purchase a copy of “In Training” here.