Origami For Kids

Some technical notes on the latest line of thought. Artist-types and casual readers, please ignore. A fan shape, or for that matter a simple accordion pleat or even a single mountain fold, can be embellished with “dimples”. These can be curving folds as in the Peacock’s Tail (last post), but they can more easily be straight ones: squares or diamonds with a valley-fold diagonal. They can be applied to one side of the paper—mountains only—or to two, mountains and valleys both. If applied to one side only, the sheet will start to bend or curl toward that side. And if done to both sides, the curling of the surface can be made to balance out. With fans, the curvature starts to assume a shape resembling a clam-shell. If a pattern is applied to both sides, there is an natural version with a nice mathematical aspect, with dimples on one side repeated every fourth corrugation line, and diagonally below it. Dimples interrupt the straightness and destroy the rigidity of the lines in a corruga...

Around the time I launched this Blog, a question on my mind was: Is there any shape more beautiful in origami than the Paper Fan---that starts from the fan as its point of origin? In other words: Can the Fan be improved? The answer is – I suspect not. But there certainly exist highly fruitful progressions that have begun from this shape. I am referring to forms by, I believe, Kawasaki and Paul Jackson from an earlier generation, and in this one, the methodical “geometric” explorations of e.g. Ray Schamp and Goran Konjevod. All of these add a layer of complexity and visual interest and sometimes too a curving third dimension to the fan-shape’s basic two, but at a cost to the purity of that primal form, the sunburst. The cost is greater than the benefit, in my opinion. But what is to be done: we can’t remain virgins forever. It is the same problem with the Square, which invariably is more beautiful and pure than the tarantula or unicorn that is made from it. Anyway, while seeking an an...

One of the reasons origami lends itself so well to the representation of animals is that animals are basically symmetric, and shapes made from a folded square—aligning edges, corners, flaps or other reference points—themselves tend to be naturally symmetrical. In animals, the main symmetry is of course bilateral (reflective), but there are other symmetries as well. Hind legs and forelegs are ‘symmetrical’ in the sense of being similar to each other, so you have translational symmetry (copy and move) along with a sort of ‘allometric’ symmetry (plot features on a grid, stretch the grid). Digits, that is fingers and toes, are further branchings of limbs, and like branches elsewhere are a form of symmetry: ‘repeat the same thing, at another extremity, at a smaller scale’. In origami the similarity of the small-scale activity to the large-scale one is even more apparent. Actually, symmetries in an animal can be even more subtle, and extend to body parts which look quite different from each...

Not much lately to show origami-wise, though a few things are cooking. Meanwhile here is a little study I made a few days ago of a Velazquez, oil and chalk on wood. Just keeping in shape. --S.