A good friend, Janet, found some marbled tie-dyed mulberry paper when she was recently in Bangkok, Thailand.
Like a true maniac she carefully rolled and carried with her on her travels, returning to Australia she carefully transported it to a place I would also be (Townsville for a conference). 
What commitment. Continue reading
Not quite sure how I missed this little beauty in the flurry of folding fishies, but Sensei Koh messaged me on fakebook and asked why I had not folded it. Truth is I was dazed and confused (and just a little fished out) and must have just missed it:
That is a pity, this little charmer is one of my favourites in the collection. Lovely aquiline body shape. flowing find and well formed head. Continue reading
Fun Fact – the collective noun for goldfish is either “Glint” or “Troubling” – now you know:
Now to choose which of these will make it to the actual goldfish bowl – suggestions….? Continue reading
Interestingly (for me), I have had goldfish over the years. At one stage I had a tank with 3 of these in it – Blackmoors – lovely plump little goggle-eyed black goldfish:
I remember as they got sicker, they became less black until, as they floated upside down ready to be scooped and flushed to an early grave they were almost a deep purple colour. Continue reading
A completely different folding technique was a nice change with this much tortured bit of paper:
An odd-shaped goldfish, famously all white except for a colourful growth on the head, this thin-waisted fantail was actually really hard work even at this scale. Continue reading
…continuing on the “fishy” journey, the final in this technique’s series of plump full-bodied goldfish, Ronald Koh’s Ranchu:
Oddly, this mutant is known for the cancer-like orange growth on it’s head, the model approximates this. Continue reading
…continuing the fishy theme, this is Ronald Koh’s Oranda Goldfish:
A lovely plump little fellow, I am sure I have had these at one time or another – round body, abundance of thin fins and round head. Continue reading
Continuing the fishy theme, this “goldfish” looks more like a salmon:
The base, similar to the previous two manages to devote more to body, less to fins so that it looks like you would get a decent fillet of this little fishy. Continue reading
Continuing on the “something fishy” theme, I thought i would have a go at the Veiltail:
This goldfish mutant is nuts – bred for the profundity of tail, the body is stunted and a small muscular tail necessary to drove the massive drapery of tail fins. Continue reading
I have been searching for something “fishy” to make with some lovely paper gifted by a friend when Ronald Koh came to the rescue with some amazing mutant goldfish designs:
This is a Ryukin, and has a lovely 3d body, staring eyes and beautiful flowing fantail. Characterised by a hunched back, chunky body and pot belly, they swim slowly and provide decorative elements to any aquarium. Continue reading
As part of my JOAS membership, I get sent magazines with models to try – a really excellent collection of complex models from the worlds best designers. When I saw Satoshi Kamiya’s Dragonfly, I was really scared of it.
The level of pleat management and re-arrangement of flaps and layers is truly terrifying when viewed as a whole.
As a “treat”, to reward my marking progress (I am a teacher, I set assessment but hate marking it) I allowed myself to complete a couple of steps each sitting. This fold has taken place over the period of 3 weeks, a little at a time. the advantage of this method is that I did not get freaked out by what was to come, just concentrating on the couple of steps I was allowed to complete. Continue reading
Faces are things we humans are born to recognise. We see them everywhere, we can recognise them with the barest of visual clues:
Apparently even magpies do facial recognition, remembering the dive-bombing victim and their seeming boundary transgressions for years.
I am interested in the structure of faces, particularly how little paper manipulation is necessary to evoke a face that embodies an expression, the visual manifestation of attitude and mood.
Inspired by the work of Junior Fritz Jacquet, I am exploring how to fold faces from flat sheets without edge incursions, with the hope that it translates into tube-folded faces – we shall see. I have documented my progress below: Continue reading
I am often asked why some of my posts are preceded with a number. I must admit to folding paper, on and off, since I was 11, but more recently I took it back up again as a sort of physical therapy to convince myself (as much as anything) that I could control my nerve-damaged hands after spinal reconstruction.
The numbering makes sense to me, really. On January 2011 I (in retrospect rather naively) decided to try and fold a different model every day for a year. I numbered the models as I folded them, using that index to catalogue the unique folds I managed to achieve.
When I got to 365, I ran out of 2011 and no longer had the one a day madness that was actually really interesting.
I decided to keep folding. When I fold something I had never folded before it too is granted a number. I will continue – it is a useful metric for me, might be an organiser for you but it reminds me of the staggering variety of models out there, and reminds me of the fact that I have really only tried a tiny fraction of them so far.
Now you know …
Rowing is huge at my school – a veritable machine that hundreds of kids get very passionate about, a gear-fest like few others:
Seems the purpose of the sport is to put boys in lycra, sitting atop tiny fiberglass shells, armed with a paddle rowing furiously backwards across vast distances of water. The competitive nature sees rowers exerting huge amounts of energy, enthusiasm and biomass in singles, teams of 2,4,and 8 with or without cox against other equally keyed-up teams. Quite a spectacle.
Flipping through an obscure copy of Papiroflexia Bicolour by Fernando Gilgado, I was struck with a pair of … models that looked like fun to make.
I had some small (10in) squares of handmade Kozo left over from the eagle fold and thought I would give it a whirl.
The fun and hilarity began – I have provided you with a cutout so you can do some arrangement depending on your orientation and preference – is it “Adam and Eve”, “Adam and Steve” or “Eve and Gwen” – you decide. Continue reading
