Took a leisurely walk through some rainforest and noticed these perfect blue wrens, flitting from trunk to vine:
Exploring a new book called Origami Essence by Roman Diaz, this little beauty was amongst the models I have decided to try.
I like the “wrenny”ness of this model. Some lovely techniques here for this keeper of a freestanding bird model
Now I am aware that a certain “Brent” recently had a birthday, and on that birthday I folded a creepy crawly, so thought it appropriate to counter the scary with “unicorns and rainbows”:
This is Roman Diaz’s Unicorn, lovely thing – mane, tail, beautiful ears, splendid horn.
Happy Birthday (all be it belated) Michael the Brent – may you live long and prosper. Folded amidst the rainforests of northern NSW
Amongst the plethora of models I still have not yet tried, there are some beauties:
This is Roman Diaz’s Deer and it is a lovely specimen indeed. 10 points on his antlers, proud stance and a spring in his step.
This model, though lovely, was a cow to fold – hand drawn instructions that were not to scale, step 41 I missed altogether, which caused no end of peril and a re-fold (so sue me).
In the end this is fantastic – you get a real sense of the animal, the proportions and stance feel quite natural, the ingenious mangling to get enough points for the antlers amazing and the wrangling to get the majority of the paper tucked away to reveal the body nothing short of breathtaking. 
Diaz has a unique style, this model features closed sinks in abundance (quite difficult to do well) and so provided me with some valuable practice.
For me the sounds of summer always include the trill of cicadas:
This is Robert Lang’s “Periodical Cicada” which is similar to the adult form we hear but rarely see. They spend most of their lives underground, emerge as wierd wingless mutants, clumb up something and moult, leaving the most beautiful exoskeletons behind.
Many a summer day was spent as a kid collecting these and terrifying my sister with them … well, kids are kids I suppose.
There is much to admire about this fold – the layer management, proportions of body to wing and ensuring there was enough for some lovely legs is one amazing design. Folded from an ebook on my iPad (why have I not been doing this before???), it was a nice way to spend an afternoon whilst an afternoon storm rolled in. I folded it big (60cm square) and cannot imagine folding it much smaller without extraordinary paper.
It is a relief to have achieve this, as I had a model fail before it (a hand-drawn set of spanish instrucitons started out a bit iffy and after 2 hours went nowhere – you get that sometimes).
Come this time of year, we ALL engage in a sort of origami, with varying success and neatness – wrapping presents:
This is Yami Yamauchi’s “Pandora’s Box” – a devilishly clever fold that makes a beautiful cube that once folded is near impossible to un-fold.
The instructions suggest fold it part way, put something precious inside and close it up, only to watch the faces of the receiver as they try to open the gift without tearing the paper – lol.
An ingenious box folded from fifths – originally I was going to fold this in white, then remembered some rather splendid stripey wrapping paper and that solved 2 problems with the one roll really as I used the stripes to work out the proportions – 5×3 stripes = fitfhs of a decent size, hooray. There are many geometric constructions for making fifths but they often leave creases in the paper as you make them and I wanted it to be as blemish free as flimsy wrapping paper would allow.
In retrospect, it ended up being almost exactly the size of my Rubics Cube, lovely thing.
Well, when I say great .. it is … ok :
For the size of paper I am amazed how small this bird ended up, so much paper is folded into the body and legs to reveal the essential egret shape.
A lovely sold body, slender (although I would have liked to have made them thinner, alas the media would not let me), nifty serpentine neck and simple head – all you would want in an egret I would say.
I am not sure whose model this is – anyone like to help me identify it? This is 356 meaning there are a total of 10 more models left – getting exciting it is.
Like this? Want it? BID for it now.
Wow. You know, sometimes a set of instructions for a model are so well designed that it is a pleasure to fold – time just … goes – so it was with this little beauty:
Robert Lang is a design genius, using mathematical and art sensibilities he has distilled what is essentially “mantis” and worked out ways of folding away everything but this essence.
Six beautiful legs, front two “prayey” ones with claspers, glorious head with inquisitive antennae, approporiate proportioned body and, well, wow, just wow.
I am not going to pretend that I did not struggle with this, but after yesterday’s model I was determined to go for accuracy, so necessary with so many accordion pleats. The legs are soooooo thin – painful to fold but amazingly brown paper survived without any paper fatigue.
I am so please with this model – all aspects of it. I folded opened-out paper clips into the legs to give them strength so she can stand freely and so the “knee” joints stay bent – 20+ layers of paper are really hard to bend and I envisaged accidentally snapping off a leg whilst trying to shape it.
I will fold this again, should I ever get some more suitable paper – needs to be tissue thin but really strong – normal paper will just not work. Bravo Mr lang, your figure is a masterpiece and I for one feel honoured to have folded it.
Some folds are good for telling you that you still have much to learn – this is one of them:
An ASTONISHING model, that took me an age to almost achieve, so many different techniques and punishing to the paper. I started yesterday morning with a 60cm square of brown paper determined to keep folding until either I totally buggered it up, the paper disintegrated or it worked.
As it turned out, errors (small inaccuracies) in folding early on, and a few misinterpretations of unexplained folds meant that later stages were more complicated and hence less tidy.
I have learnt a lot from this fold – there are some breathtaking manoeuvres and heart stopping moments when you turn the page and the next instruction is “unfold everything” but in the end I am satisfied that I got a vaguely “ancient dragonny” model and more importantly I now know what goes where. I will fold this again and am sure that second time around the result will be tidier but take a moment to consider the details:
8 horns, skull, eyes, jaw on the head alone, lovely toes, 4 of them on each of 4 feet, amazing wings that look like they are flapping, leathery scaled body (a ridgetail, for sure – Potter fans agree?). The body, at it’s thickest, has over 40 layers which makes some of the shaping and final modelling tough work. I am at a loss to know what sort of paper you could do this with – I am however amazed with the brown paper – it did not tear or fatigue even once – long after the folder had sworn, stormed off only to return later and keep trying.
I am really glad I tried this model, a useful reminder that I am no master of the art, merely this guy who bends paper,
Roman Diaz is one of many talented Spanish origamists and with this model he captures something of the proud noble stallion:
there is much to like about this model – apart from it being a nifty use of the fish/camel base, the posture, proportions and attitude evident in the horse are present in this little model. He is also free-standing, on 3 legs, neato.
A slight mis-calculation in scale made this model really difficult to fold – the thickness of paper and tiny details made shaping a real challenge – I will fold this bigger because there is much model-ability here, truly clever design.
I got caught up in a much more complicated fold and completely forgot I had no fold for today, so searched the list of “must dos” and came up with this one. Happy with this as a first fold.
This cutie little devil is such a snarly fold, but was a lot of fun because the design was well thought out:
Jun Maekawa models are always well planned but this little beauty started much bigger – folded from a 60cm square, the resultant model is barely 13cm toe to horn and I am so glad I decided to use brown paper instead of regular copy paper – the thicknesses are 17-23 layers in places – wow.
A lovely set of hands, splendid demonic tail, horns, frown and a cutey tongue – this guy is a masterpiece that has taken me an age to fold. I started earlier this afternoon to cheer myself up after attending a funeral, and this evening he is finally finished.
I have seen miniature versions of this (including one folded by Jun himself that is only a couple of cm tall, in a bottle) and I am buggered if I can work out how you could fold it much smaller – it is so fiddly in so many junctures.
I had no idea on this, the first fold, what was what – I will fold this again now I know how it works – it is not a speedy fold, so many layers but I see extra modelling potential in the face – so much more could be made of his expression. Although he is meant to be a little devil, he is rather cute and free-standing also, using feet and tail the tripod is effective to offset the weight of paper folded into the body.
This fold achieved, it means I have only 15 models left in this challenge – bring it on.
Now I have gradually come to realise that captive cetaceans must lead a miserable life – dolphins particularly given tehy “see” with sonar, but the Orca is also something that does not belong in captivity:
This is Satoshi Kamiya’s Orca, well my go at it – for the most part it worked but there are some untidy parts that , in retrospect, I cannot work out if they were my fault or the fault of the diagrams.
With duo paper, this model is the standard black with white parts (or is that white with black parts) – was tempted to make the dorsal droop (in honour of “Willy” the orca who never actually managed to get free.
Inching towards the end of this project, need to be strategic with the models I choose, you get that sometimes.
So I was putting up the tree again this year and remembered we had nothing to put atop it:
I remembered an “angel” designed originally by Neal Elias, reworked by gabriel Vong that I had put in the “must try this sometime” pile, so set about folding it.
A nice figurative angel, hands clasped in prayer, lovely wings and a nifty gusset at the back to allow you to insert some foliage at the pointy end of your tree.
You should try this, it is actually fairly straight forward. I had a sheet of gold metallic paper (but wrapping paper would make the fold even easier) and bent it laboriously (it was almost card, so the folds around the hands, shoulders etc were hard going – thank goodness for fingernails as my finger tips are bruised and sore from the continued 365 onslaught).
Atop the tree she is lovely – this is an A4-cut square, prolly a little big for our small tree but ideal for a larger one.
Complicated folds are one thing, simple folds that have precise proportions are another:
This is a face modelled after an idea by David Brill – 7 folds total, all gentle, with great restraint and the most curious thing happens, the paper begins to look back at you with the most curious eyes.
With subtle folds, light finger pressure only, variations of dent, bulge and shifting crease line all manner of facial expressions are possible – this is my fav so far, but will fold this again.
Had intended something waaaay more complicated for today, but it is not yet done so it will wait for another day.
This is folded from an A4-cut square, a lifesize face would be achieved with an A3 – cut square, nice one to add to my “by heart” collection.
A dear old friend is not well, but likes Unicorns – what better example of such a beastie is Satoshi Kamiya’s model:
This has been an all day affair – started this morning before I went out, some more in the late afternoon then finishing off after coming home from dinner out.
Satoshi suggests a starting size of 35cm square, I decided on 55cm, and found even that terribly fiddly, particularly as this was a first fold and I did not know what was going to end up where.
Happy with this as a first attempt – this model will not be auctioned, sorry, it is a gift to Joyce, I hope she likes it. So what’s with the title? I took a photo gallery up to my Mum’s yesterday, seems the models are not as recognisable as I thought (maybe it is because I am so familiar with them), but the number of guesses that were not even close was amazing – you get that.
Cephalopods are a tricky subject in Origami, this is a figurative squid by Jun Maekawa:
Having eaten and cooked squid on a number of occasions, the basic body morpholoigy is right, the yummy bits are all there.
A nice set of bilaterally symmetrical pleats, a fun collapse and a 3d re-shaping makes an entirely recognisable squiddy.
There are a bunch of Maekawa’s models that I would like to try – he/she (sorry, not sure) has an original approach to the square and the models have a unique character
