2 days

1158: Wilhelmina the Wyvern

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Flipping through Makoto Yamaguchi’s “Origami Dragons Premium”, as one does, I stumbled across a lovely Wyvern, designed by Chuya Miyamoto:

Digging through my paper stash I found the perfect sheet for this model, a purple spotty Do paper that was part of a prize I won from Phạm Hoàng Tuấn’s Vietnamese origami paper shop pre-pandemic, so decided to give it a whirl.

My philosophy when approaching a super-complex origami design is based around “fuck around and find out” or more politely “fold until I finish or it fails”, and this model was a real treat.

A truly great design and fold sequence takes into account the material, not overly stressing it, managing accumulating layers and locking things together to keep things tidy. This design was so satisfying to fold, and in combination with the paper choice the resultant model is stunning.

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1079: Neelesh Kumar’s “Experience”

| wonko

All too rarely does an origami fold feel autobiographical, but when I first saw the CP and published fold of Neelesh Kumar’s “Experience”, I knew I needed to try it:

1079: Neelesh Kumar's "Wisdom"

From a SINGLE uncut square we have 2 separate fully formed characters – an elderly wizened “know it all” and a youngster at the beginning of a large book he is holding. The clever narrative thread is that they are connected by the the beard that morphs into the book.

1079: Neelesh Kumar's "Wisdom" - OLD

“Experience” is many things to many people: knowing when to shut the fuck up and when to assert your opinion, a willingness to pass on what you know, knowing what you do not know, knowing what to say when.

1079: Neelesh Kumar's "Wisdom" YOUNG

This clever boxpleat is one of many NK specialises in, and I am not sure i have done it justice, but the character of the model asserted itself in the folding process so I went with the flow.

I struggled with the whole transition between characters, and initially completely forgot the collapse that formed the book, needing to un-do the little person almost completely before doing the book crenellation. Based on a 40×40 grid, the face of the elder was feature-rich, but the face of the younger very plain – I sort of muddled along, thinking the concept was as important as the detail.

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Chinese Dragon in Repose

| wonko

My usual line “if you find interesting paper, get it and I will make you something out of it” has been the start of many fascinating journeys:

Mikiller觅晨’s modular dragon

Peter and Majella travelled to Japan, and found some lovely paper – one, a sheet of hand-made natural Kozo with botanical inclusions screamed out for something delicate and textured. I had intended to return to Mikiller觅晨’s modular dragon, having already folded it large, I thought it might be interesting to fold it tiny and trap it in a shadowbox frame.

The handover
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829: (279/365) Kablang!

| wonko

Leafing through my copy of Drawing Origami Tome 2, I noticed a spectacular modular designed by Francesco Mancini that I knew I had to try:

Modules folded from 2×1 rectangles lock together really nicely, creating clusters of 3 and 5, forcing the megastructure to curve gently into a spikey ball. Continue reading →

614: (64/365) Brickwork Fireplace

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Brickwork tessellations are a bit of work, but it is nice to see a model that uses the tessellation as the texture of another structure:

This is Ichiro Kinoshita’s “Fireplace by Brickwork”, a torturous fold that requires a ton of pre-creasing and as the scale I chose (square cut from an A3 sheet), the final crease lines end up about 4mm apart on fairly heavy paper – not, in retrospect, a good choice. Continue reading →

551: (1/365) Mummy Star

| wonko

When my sister in law went to Nepal, she found some rather charming Lokta paper, hand-made with block printed gold floral designs. She carefully transported it back with her for me to wrangle. I had a modular in mind and the orange Lokta seemed the obvious choice:

This is Miyuki Kawamura’s Mummy Star, a startlingly complicated modular in 30 pieces. The technique of folding splayed fans, then folding them back on themselves gives the appearance of “wrapping” or bandages I suppose (think Mummy Movie). Continue reading →

476: Shiny

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In desperate need of some occupational therapy after a punishing term, I looked for a “no brainer” fold to calm my racing brain – instead I found this:

The CLO Kusudama, designed by Isa Klein was beautifully demonstrated in a video by Jo Nakashima, and I decided to give it a go. Continue reading →

393: Six Intersecting Pentagonal Stars (SIP)

| wonko

When I first saw this thing on Happy Folding I knew I was destined to try it:

This glorious modular designed by Francesco Mancini uses a unit similar to a Frances Ow 60 degree unit but in a very different way to make chevron-shaped modules that lock together to form pentagonal stars.

The tricksey part is to then nestle the stars so they are inside each other, weaving one inside and outside every other star – thank goodness I chose a different colour for each star else I have no idea how I would have managed to work out what strut went where in the construction.

I am quite chuffed (and a little relieved to be honest) with the result as I attempted to construct it 7 times before successfully working out what went where. Fully formed it is quite stable and rigid – it was everything but that during construction however making it very awkward indeed.

Lovely stellar structure suitable for display.