Story Arc 2: Fascinators

The small wave at the edge of the paper in my last post was somewhat of a revelation to me. The concept of using the majority of the square of paper as a formal element to which a small articulate origami fascinator is folded in really appeals. I am not sure where this will go but here are a few examples so far.

Story arc

So I have been thinking allot lately.  Working too hard and sadly as a result making allot of progress.  Sadly because it is an apparent fact that I come up with better ideas when I am under duress.  I think it is why I like origami.  It is a completely uninterested practice.  Very few people I know even know other people who make it and when I am concentrating on other things I seem to relax when I consciously think about origami.

So I had an idea recently.  I thought to make a wave on the edge of a triangle of paper.  It is pretty sad as an idea and I don't even think I like the result but it was the start of a few good lines of enquiry that I like the results of.  I think the wave as an idea is the result of making Robert Lang's Nautilus ages ago but it really just came to me.

I worked on it and the fold pattern turned out to be quite versatile.

The story arc in the title refers to the fact I came up with this over a month ago and I have generated two new full designs and one whole new school of origami for me from this starting point.  I hope to write these up in imminent blogs and through the time travelling power of links interconnect the four blogs I plan to write ( including this one ) into clear lines of development.

So these images are of the wave fold pattern and the wave as well as the bulls head (also bad) and the bowl (still not good). 

I have also tried to add a couple of gadgets to the blog.  I do not know if this is a good idea or not but I am trying to be as modern as I can be.

Tintin Rocket Workshop

For my sins I have agreed to do a workshop today between 4 and 6pm at the Woodmill Depot in Bermondsey.

I said to the organisers that I would go through a series of models that I had designed myself teaching people how to make them and explaining the processes that are behind the designs.  This is much scarier than it sounds.  I have developed a series of step by step models (each step as a separate piece of paper).  I have the butterfly, tintin rocket, scorpion, and squid ready with a more complicated plan for presenting the hellraiser flower.  This is all to say that I have been thinking about this all too much.  I am thinking I will present a basic extrapolation petal folds as a very versatile element in design in my own development.

I have included the tintin rocket photos here.  I realised I have never documented it.  It is I think the first model of my own design.  It is at least 15 years old and I find it very strange to even conceive of what my thought processes were when I made it first.

What I think scares me is how simple it seems and that no one will see anything exciting in it.  I am sure that if I tried to present all my work in 2 hrs I would confuse and annoy but it is strange all these models are at least 5 years old and there are so many good models in the world.  My current pieces are so abstract that naming them would almost be lying.  Too much time making origami I think.  And of course I got distracted and have discoverd a new fold and started making claws or eagles or goat heads from it.  Grrr always everything at once.

Anyway I hope you enjoy the rocket it is still nostalgic to me.

Firstfold Mushroom

So I gave in and looked up mushroom designs online.  It was gooooood.  I found this set of images by firstfold and was genuinely hitting my head with the keyboard.  

I had come across stuff like it when making the chess set.  It is basically a piece of paper consertinad 16 times then you make a profile of half of the shape you want and then you expand the outer edge of the shape around and back onto itself.  Honestly that actually makes sense to me.

Anyway I loved the fact that I made a turtle while trying to make a mushroom and firstfold made a mushroom while trying to make an umbrella.

I simply added a ruffle to make it a little more atomic and presto.  Annoyingly I thought the stem should be taller so I had to make a second one.

I know an origami mushroom cloud is loaded.  I think I first started formulating this idea with Thomas Hirschorn's mushrooms in Drift Topography that I had the job of stopping from self destructing while it was on at the Tate.  I remember all the morning after style films and TV series when I was a kid and liked how playful his approach to the subject was.  I think that shape is a modern titan.

You can see from the photos there were 2 and they are both from 10cm square memo cube paper.  A bit silly really but somehow it seemed right if I could do it all at such an actual mushroom scale.   

Mushroom

So I did photograph the mushroom this morning.  It is a little bit of a long shot, more of an architectural shape that I have given a name to.

The basic idea was that the same folds that I use for stairs, the cowboy hat and the ziggurat can be turned inside out to create a sort of darting in the paper.  When repeated this gives a bump in the middle of the sheet.  I used a simple tuck underneath to stop it undoing itself.  

For the mushroom head I just did a second set of darts a bit further from the middle and on the diagonal.  I have to admit the rolled paper as the base is kind of funny.  I like the idea of a non folded origami object.  This again is a multi piece model which am in two minds about but it hasn't stopped me posting it.

Slow Turtle

Sorry Nick, thank you for looking.  I just get sidetracked and forget that people might actually look at what I post.

 Anyway I was trawling the origami photography archive I put together a while ago.  I was reminded of one of my favourite older designs.  Again the paper is grid based, I think I like the malleability of grid systems in origami it can quickly lead to some really strange shapes.  I remember enjoying the bubble shape I made in the middle of the paper which i thought might make a good mushroom head but the excess  turned out more like legs and presto, a turtle. A kind of slow and dopey looking one at that.

I have made another dome thing in the middle of a piece of paper which looks a bit like a mushroom and I will hopefully have worked into a photographable object soon.

Ashtray

I was told that someone actually read my blog today.  This made me happy and actually remember that some of the point of writing this blog was to archive what I had done for myself as much as anyone else, so...

The origami ash tray is actually quite simple to make but much like the origami chess set it has a somewhat chindogu based design.  

Hellraiser Flower 4: Zombies Ate My Flower

Hello Strangers

It has been pointed out that I have been a bit crap about updating lately but I am trying again now so....

Anyway I have been reading an origami book called Project Origami by Thomas Hull.  It is the geekiest book ever and it applies complex mathematics and origami through a series of projects.  It has been very interesting for me but I cannot say there is much that is even remotely interesting or comprehensible to others in it.  I did however learn that each time you divide a square in origami it becomes more accurate.  That is if you fold a sheet in half and then into quarters and then into eighths the eighths will be more accurate than the half you divided the page by to begin with.  

Anyway with this principal in mind I revisited an old design and found that with the same size piece of paper I could fit 4 of my hellraiser flowers onto a single sheet.  I have also worked out to interlock these flowers into a cube similar to the old design but will take a bit of time actually making these.