When a legend graciously shares hand-drawn diagrams for a lovely simple Eastern Dragon, one simply has to give it a go:

This is an “Eastern Dragon” – interestingly most people in the west believe you need to staple wings on such a critter so that it can fly. Our eastern cousins accept that this sort of critter can fly, wings are not necessary for this activity.

This design was recently shared, luscious hand-drawn diagrams from @brianchandesigns, a gracious and fabulous gift to the origami community.

I started with a 35cm of red/natural Kraft paper (a little thick for purpose) and followed along, hiding away most of the paper using a fairly simple accordion sink, wrestled with head and leg details but ended up with a design reminiscent of Joseph Wu’s design (in that it reduces the body into a long multilayer strip that is then crimped into shape.

I may try this again with larger (or thinner) paper – the leg construction of this first fold is a little clumsy, but it was a nice sequence all the richer for the hand-drawn diagrams (a rare treat as most diagrams these days are either photodiagrams or computer drawn).

Fun fold, thanks for the share.