I bought some new shirts yesterday – interleaved inside was some lovely white tissue. I folded it into 3rds, then half to get a square, then half, then half and kept going until I had a small, multi-layered square about 8cm on the side.
Next I crumpled that so the centre of the square was a point. It was tough as there were so many layers. I then opened the last halving, reinforced the valley between, inverted one of the points (as one was up, the other down), and re-crumpled the points.
Repeating this technique, opening a layer, reinforcing the valleys in-between each point, inverting half so they all pointed the same way and re-crumpling, allowing the crumples to become more random as they thinned out.
I have always been fascinated by Egyptian symbology, myths and ancient artforms. The very pictorial style is angular, stylised, often animal-based and very interesting. Anubis is the god of funerary rites, protector of graves, and guide to the underworld, in ancient Egyptian religion, usually depicted as a canine or a man with a canine head:
I am currently watching STARGATE, a few episodes at a time with my son. I began watching it back in the days of free-to-air broadcasting but, for whatever reason I stopped (prolly because I had a life and no longer had time/access to episodes). The series premise is interesting, and I particularly love their hijacking of Egyptian gods/mythos as the “baddies”, as well as the whole aesthetic.
I wish I could remember where I first found this Crease pattern (CP). It has been in my “must try this, sometime” pile for a couple of years and I finally got around to it when looking for something to fold with my second bit of treated Wenzhou rice paper (not made of rice, is a fine and resilient mulberry). I also wish I knew the designer – can anyone help me out here as I would love to give proper attribution?
The CP seemed pretty straight forward – indeed the collapse was quite natural (I did not do my usual “parachuting” as I tried to collapse key details in the order that seemed most logical), and resulted in a base with a myriad of stickey-outey parts in more or less correct locations. I am so pleased with my developing CP solving skills – a loooooong way to go, but every success encourages me further.
30 years ago, the Papermakers & Artists of Queensland (POQ) first formed – in July it was their PEARL anniversary.
As a diverse collective of artists (that allowed me to become a member) we were asked to respond to the notion of “Pearl” to assemble an exhibit of artworks to mark this occasion.
My thoughts, naturally, turned to folding and I was reminded of an organic 3D form I last explored for “The Offering” inspired by the work by legend Paul Jackson.
The idea was simple – using one set of slightly overlapping pleats in one direction, that are then corrugated in the perpendicular direction, you can “tease” dimensionality by “cheating” the overlap with a delicate pull.
Taking a square of trusty Kraft paper, I mocked up a Maquette, pleating and corrugating around a central line, then “MacGyvered” a hinge using simple box-pleating techniques, as I had the notion it should be a “book” of sorts. The hinge mechanism had a natural gutter that allowed me to bind pages securely inside also.
For the production fold, I chose metallicized pearlescent “Terryfoil”, I cut 2x 25cm squares and pleated and corrugated, carefully, then spread the pleats until it achieved the desired curvaceousness.
Comes the time of year when we tell little kids that a morbidly obese stranger in a red suit breaks into their house (by coming down a chimney or other entry point if there is no chimney), eats some random snack, feeds a portion of that snack to a reindeer (who has a birthmark on it’s nose) and then leaves presents, regardless of whether you have been an entitled little shit all year, or a saint:
As a parent I was complicit in this lie until my kids (fairly early on) cottoned on to the fact that this whole thing was so very unlikely, and merely a mechanism for justifying a mound of presents under the xmas tree.
I wanted to try out the new paper pack of Satogami I got from Origami-shop and this festive fold seemed like the perfect opportunity given the latest Tanteidan magazine (which contains it’s diagrams) arrived this week also.
Duo Satogami is quite thick. I bought a paper pack of 58cm squares, mixed colours and love the vibrancy of the red/white, and also love the texture of the paper. I _want_ to report that pre-creasing Satogami was easy … but … I really struggled to my the reference folds and to fold accurately because of the thickness and texture. The paper reverses fairly poorly also (meaning I had to correct lots of folds for accuracy as I went to ensure alignment of layers and edges during more complex moves.
Occasionally I am privileged to be asked to test-fold new models, and I jumped at the chance to fold this Numbat:
As far as I can see, this is the first depiction of this native Australian insectivorous marsupial in origami and the design captures the morpohology and proportions really well.
Starting with a preliminary base, then folding a skewed birdbase, the side stripes naturally emerge in cleverly controlled colour changes, along with the legs, neck and ant-eater-like snout, along with a lovely bushy tail.
I folded this chap from a 40cm square of white/natural Kraft paper (some of my last from the Ikea stash – I wish they sold it again, great stuff) and the fold sequence was fun – some really interesting moves and a good range of skills necessary to complete the model neatly.
