In days of old, when people of a township were threatened they retreated (as their last best hope) into the Keep – a heavily fortified “core” of the castle that was designed to withstand the most vigorous of attacks
So I had this odd but interesting idea that it should, given the right size of paper, be possible to fold an entire castle from it. After being inspired by Gachepaper and his exploration of Lotka I decided to give it a whirl
I was given a beautiful sheet of Unryushi tissue by a friend. The arrangement (in case YOU want to take part also) is if you give me nice paper, I will make you something out of it.
I prepared the paper by Methyl Cellulosing it to a clean window:
This make it crisp and strong, then, in a dragony frame of mind, I used Tadashi Mori’s own folding tutorial to fold a Darkness Dragon 2.
I had already folded the Darkness Dragon 1, but this model was a refinement I had not tried. There is a killer collapse after some exacting pre-folding – a sort of all these folds happen at the same time whilst inside a bunch of others, but the sense of it makes for a lovely body.
When the moon is in the Seventh House
And Jupiter aligns with Mars
Then peace will guide the planets
And love will steer the starsThis is the dawning of the Age of Aquarius
Age of Aquarius
Aquarius! Aquarius!
I saw a crease pattern whilst trolling through the Origami Forum that looked like it was relatively straight forward to lay out on a piece of paper, based on fairly well controlled 64th grid with some fairly straightforward easy to locate landmarks and so thought I would give it a go.
It took nearly 2 days to lay all the creases in to the crease pattern – wiggly lines in one corner were punishing and at the time I had no idea what were to be mountain and valley folds so just made sure they were good creases reasoning they would reverse effortlessly.
In the olden days children, photographs were taken with a specialised piece of equipment, usually by a professional, using FILM:
In those days, you posed the shot, measured light levels, pulled focus and ensured the picture was worth taking before you wasted the plate – photography was expensive and much more of a science (some would also argue much moe of an art).
In the modern idiom, nearly every thing has a squillion megapixel camera, you point, shoot 60 frames, pick the least worst, apply a filter and upload it on Instagram and have your “friends” praise your artistry. Continue reading
I had a small but lovely piece of elephant-dung paper – now this is not as gross as it first sounds, the paper is cleaned fiber retrieved from elephant dung – yeah, ok, it does not sound any less grotty – lovely textured irregular and lumpy paper though it was:
I needed a model, Sebastien Limet’s Tarsier seemed most logical (given I had not folded it before and I thought folding it near life-size might be an interesting challenge).
There is much to love about this model – apart from the delicious expressiveness of the face, delicate grip of its primate hands or the prehensile grip of its tail, this is a real charmer.
I like that the face is implied, but I can see lovely big innocent eyes, sensitive ears and all the hallmarks of a delicate but mischievous “bush baby” which makes these little chaps endangered in the wild because rich folk sentence them to long agonizing deaths as pets outside of their native habitats. Continue reading
It is a little recognised fact that the animal that has killed the most people in Africa is in fact the Hippopotamus:
I stumbled across this delightful model while leafing through “African Animals in Origami” – a much worn volume when looking for something to try from my invalid chair.
I had a gold (more correctly bronze) foil square and was wanting to fold something “yoshizawa style” – free form hand-held rather than on table or other flat surface – the challenges with this style are accuracy and precision, the payoffs are often more fluid, softer curves and lively asymmetrical poses.
I like this model, although he reflective paper makes discerning details difficult – she has a wry grin, 2 lovely tusks on her bottom jaw, lovely ears and a fine rump after some 3d modelling.
I stumbled across low res hand-drawn diagrams of a Ryu (Chinese dragon) and with a cursory glance said “why not give that a go”:
Two weeks later and a whole bunch of improvising helped me realise that may not have been a wise choice but I have something that is at least based on Hoang Trung Thanh’s model but not faithful to it.
On folding the range of pleats I added a ziggy zaggy spine, decided on 3 rows of scales and invented a method of locking the leg units (each leg is a separate sheet of paper) into the body pleats. I also stuffed the body (with neutral facial tissues) for a little shape and added a nice row of belly scales which I think make it look pretty nice.
The head instructions were un-followable (to me at least) so I sort of wrangled a new head with some lovely horns and a nice open mouth. Continue reading
I am old enough to remember the “good old days” when partners dance WITH each other as opposed to the modern trend of dancing AT each other:
Flicking through a yellowed and falling apart copy of “Origami 4” by Robert Harbin, I came across a Neal Elias figure I had not remembered nor tried.
Using duo coloured paper, from a simple bird base, we tease a dancing belle and her suave suited partner as they “cut a rug” together. Continue reading
In need of some therapy, and with my procrastinator set on FULL, I embarked on a punishing box-pleating exercise:
I remember as a kid in New Zealand we had a cheezy Cuckoo Clock (Mum loved it) that used to have metal pinecones as counterweights and a faux timber case that used to “cuckoo” and scare the life out of me every hour. It had the loudest tick of any clock I remember.. I am fairly sure it did not survive the emmigration back to Oz because I do not remember it afterwards.
Robert Lang is known for beautiful mathematical models and when I first saw photos of his “Black Forest Cuckoo Clock” it seemed impossible to tease all that details out of an uncut sheet. Continue reading
Sunny’s birthday is coming up and she loves Giraffes:
In browsing for a suitable model, I discovered a Tanteidan containing a Satoshi Kamiya giraffe that I had not folded, so it seems it was meant to be.
I lke this model a lot – it is full of the essential giraffe features, economically uses the sheet and contains some wonderfully complicated folds. Continue reading
I have a stack of Lotka that is just waiting to be folded into beautiful things, so I looked for something that would be suitable as a WTF (because it has been a while and my procrastinator is running on full right now):
Taking the largest square I could from a barely rectangular sheet, I pre-creased then began collapsing
I was paper shopping, as you do (my daughter calls me a paper nerd) and stumbled across a hand-made sheet of blue embossed Lotka that reminded me of dragonscale:
She who must be obeyed (SWMBO), an avid gamer and tamer of Dragons, had asked for a dragon so I put 2 and 2 together and got 17, well 5 to be precise. I have been exploring dragon-form, with the current Weyr (or wing) containing 5 dragons so far (Darkness Dragon by Tadashi Mori, Fiery Dragon by Kade Chan, Green Dragon by Piotr Pluta, Riu Zin 1.0 by Satoshi Kamiya and nearly a Western Dragon by Shuki Kato)
After examining the paper, and its fold receptivity, SWMBO decided on a Fiery Dragon so I start bending, patiently (the paper is more like fabric so although you can crease it, it tends to want to unfold again.
I have these lovely bits of Lotka and was looking for something to be my first fold with this new paper:
I chose Brian Chan’s Wolf spider partly because I had not folded it before and partly because the “milk chocolate” fibrous nature of the paper reminded me of the natural colour and texture of the spider itself.
The first cut is more painful than the first fold on a sheet that is roughly rectangular – the issues with most hand-made papers include rough edges, uneven thicknesses, odd fibre bundles in unfortunate places and a lovely mottled colour distribution.
It is not every day that I get a model published, less frequently (like never for me) in the British Origami Society Journal but …
Ballerina Kit, an original designed for my little friend dancing Kit made it into the June 2013 edition
What a lovely (if slightly late) birthday present indeed.
As a member of JOAS (Japanese Origami Society) a present arrives in the mail every now and then – the Tanteidan magazine. Although it is written in Japanese (and I can not read Japanese) there are lots of fun things to try, occasionally amazing models to try:
Now I know I should be marking, but I have all this amazing paper and when presented with a folding challenge I get a little OCD about it.
This lovely crab, designed by Jason Ku, is a mathematical masterpiece – teasing the legs and claws from edges of the paper, shaping the carapace and the final, tidying does not just happen by chance. Continue reading
