I’ve always been blown away by the models that artists can make through origami. I remember going to a friend’s house years ago, and their sister was a huge origami fan. They had paper figures and animals lining many of their shelves, and I was highly impressed. Seeing and even making some of the one-sheet projects is still mind-blowing to me. Single sheet projects with many sections and limbs look somewhat impossible. Multi-sheet ones are even more impossible. I decided to learn some origami for myself, with 2 hours, elementary art project construction paper, and carpet sunlight.
Folding Cranes
Firstly I learned how to make origami cranes, and made three. After the first, I committed the process to memory to safely say I learned something new. However, I figured I should go for more and decided to create the Jo Nakashima Dragon V2.
I firstly made the mistake of using a sheet of paper too small. That didn’t hinder me, but more so my lack of experience. I feel like we’ve all had the struggle of folding paper and having it turn out uneven. Its amplified so much more by the layering of the sheet for some folds.
Just as something I noticed, the starting steps for the dragon was identical to the crane, with horizontal, vertical, and diagonal folds into creating a smaller square.
After 50 minutes of crumples and reverting time on the video, I finally completed the dragon. See the picture with a banana for scale. I massively messed up the head, and had to optimize with a couple of improvised folds to make it look like Jo’s. Overall, despite all the white from the back-side of the sheet peering out, I’m proud of it.
Overall, in my experience, learning origami was simple and fun. Though not a first-go stress reliever, it was very therapeutic. This is the type of activity I would do on a bored weekend or in class. It was worth it though, I have a cool dragon to show off on my dresser now.
All photos are mine. I bought the banana from Walmart.
Here are the videos I used.