Work on a Juniperus stricta

I have bought this shrub in early 2005 in a garden centre. I liked its nicely tapering, straight, upright trunk and thought it would make a good formal upright bonsai.
Then I have started working on it and wired it for countless hours, up to the smallest twigs, but it didn't really work out. One problem was that I started with very low branches, which I have later realized were superfluous for the design. Second, I reasoned that with a formal upright tree only straight branches would be matching. The result was disappointing and I have pretty much lost interest in the tree, so it waited in the garden for a year. Then last year I have actually cut all the branches that I have wired because I realized they are too low.
A few days ago I started working on it again. After seeing pictures of old and huge sequoias in a book by James Balogh I realized that even the most upright Sequoias and Sequoiadendrons will have gnarly, curving branches with time, and this has influenced the new design.
By the way James Balogh's book, titled "Tree - a new vision of the American forest" is an amazing book, I enjoy it a lot. He has a unique technique of making panoramas of trees from different heights and positions, so when he stitches together the final image, the tree appears more-or-less as a whole, but the background is fragmentary. It sounds difficult to explain, but you can check it out here.
I have bought the book in Germany where the translated version is titled "Baumriesen", probably the publisher thought the original title would not arouse enough interest outside of America :)

The pictures are from 05.2005. and 10.2007. (Figure out which is which :-)

The styling is still pretty raw but I will leave the tree for now as it is to let it recuperate.