Origami For Kids

 A Reception of an Idea of Yoshizawa's Origami can be done as a doodle—you pick up a scrap of paper, say the receipt from your recent  shopping expedition, and play with it absent-mindedly at the outdoor cafe, bending it this way and that till it starts looking like an animal, all while waiting for the espresso to arrive. But you can also design origami deliberately, so that it will seem like a doodle. Here is a an extremely simple set-up that you can actually do with a grocery receipt: I venture to say that you can make—maybe not ALL the heads of all animals from this start (with mild variations), but certainly a good many of them. A head that’s mounted on a long neck or a pole. With a bit of finessing you can squeeze out a good lower-jaw too. Since the set-up is so simple and the number of folds is small, you can do this with thick “artistic” paper too, like Canson Mi-Teintes, and preserve the unblemished, unbroken  expanse of the sheet, with all its glorious textur...

  This turns out to be a very popular sculpture, with an appeal to horse lovers everywhere, both inside and outside the origami world. I'm often asked often how I came up with it. The answer is basically what you would expect. I have several ‘full horse’ models that I'm still tinkering with (have been since 1989....). On one,  the ears were unsatisfactory; so, in 2004 while out at a fast-food shop I did a blow-up-study , focusing only on the head.  That left excess paper, which got folded out of the way in overlapping flaps.  The results—a little like barn or stable doors with the head peeking out—pleased me; and so, a New Model .  Recently (2011), prompted by a fan who was enthused by just this shape, I picked the  model up again and put much improved eyes & ears on it.   Now, the above is easy enough to say. But it also happens that during those seven years of gestation, the thinking in origami has progressed, and mine has along with it. 1. For ...

  I'm writing this post on the occasion of the huge equestrian trade fair going on this week in Birmingham in the UK. A few Horse-Heads of mine are on display there, very much like these: "Horse Heads" , by Saadya, Feb 2012. Uncut sheets of Canson watercolor paper are pre-inked on one side and folded while wet. These are origami sculptures : that is, they obey the rules of the new game of origami (start from a single sheet, and make your shape entirely by folding, without cutting), while trying to stay true also to requirements of traditional sculpture (an older game with a lot more rules...) The display at the fair is meant to draw attention to a neat invention by Josephine Unsworth--about which, more below. HORSE EXHIBITION You visitors to the Birmingham Fair (and my regular readers too) might like to know that I am putting together a museum exhibition devoted entirely to horses and equestrian subjects. Besides my own things there will be work in it by some of the...

Starting out, I did not intend this to be a self-portrait. But I'm told now that this is not a conclusion I can exactly avoid.... You be the judge. Anyway. So, I figured out how to do eyeballs properly from origami, and now am going crazy putting eyes on everything. Note the magnets --the lozenge-shaped thingies. I use those on the 3D surface in places where clips can't reach, to hold layers together as the misted paper dries. (The paper is pre-treated with methyl cellulose and a light ink rub, so it stiffens up nicely.) --Anybody else do this? Cheers! Saadya

the first chameleon I've ever seen in the wild in Beersheva, I saw this morning climbing the Etrog tree in my garden a healthy young specimen--- naturally I confronted him with an unfair comparison he was utterly speechless