I first saw a pair of these lovely things, folded in white, clearly dancing to impress each other and put it on my list of must try models by Robert Lang:

A lazy afternoon over the Christmas break, I took a 60cm sq or brown Kraft paper and, over cups of tea, mince pies and chats with my mum, I bent this bird.

This model is everything to do with implied movement and pose, sadly the paper made a limp, lifeless bird and so it crystallised my resolve to try Methyl Cellulose to stiffen the model, allowing me to pose outstretched wings and wobbly backwards knees.

The result is lovely – not sure how I feel about models that require either foil-cored paper or wire armatures or chemical sizes/stiffeners to achieve a presentable figure but I like this one a lot. I made a simple florist wire stand, briefly toyed with (then promptly dismissed) the idea of making it’s pair.

There is much technique to like in this model – as usual, Lang has beautifully convoluted and torturous geometric ways of getting rid of huge amounts of paper to reveal a fairly accurate morphology.

Gifted to Helena, as a symbol of hope, courage and speedy recovery – kindest regards.