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I believe everyone is an artist, you wonder why! Well, you will know in sometime. I can bet there is not a single child who had never made a paper aeroplane or paper boat. Yes, only that much takes to be called an artist. To be an artist you need mind of a child, because a child has the most passionate, colorful and joyous mind. Executing from a paper boat to a complex yet beautiful structure is called Origami.
Origami is formed of two words, ‘Ori’ and ‘gami’, ori means folding and gami means art of paper folding. The motto of this craft is to make a sculpture from a piece of flat square paper. Modern origami techniques generally discourage the use of cuts, glue or marking on the papers. Sometimes it has been seen that small folds with many papers are made then joined along with to give it an intricate design and complex origami. The techniques are used in packaging, engineering applications and projects also.
The techniques which are being used now a days from 20th century is widely changed from the techniques of 16th century, described by many historians. Starting from China’s culture of burning paper folded origami in funerals to Japan’s ceremonial gifting with greeting cards, those are widely described in many poems of historic poets of Japan and China. In Europe another form of origami folding was famous in 17-18th century, it was actually a origami made with napkin folding was mostly forgotten.
Akira Yoshizawa was the person whom we can call the father of modern folding techniques, He stared creating and recording original origami works. He derived techniques like wet-folding and partly diagramming system. He inspired many craftsmen and from 1980s number of folders started systematically studying the mathematical properties of folded forms, which led to a rapid increase in the complexity of origami models.
Origami not only limited to still-life, there are many origami objects are being build which uses kinetic energy of hands to move and those are called action origami. There are different types of origami such as modular origami, wet-folded origami, strip folded etc. Let’s discuss each of them briefly.
Modular origami:
The base of modular folding is making small pieces of simple folds and latter they join them with the help of glue, thread or cuts to give it an intrinsic and very complex design, which is tricky yet mesmerizing. Many of the modular origami models are decorative folding balls like kusudama, the technique differs though in that kusudama allows the pieces to be put together using thread or glue. A Chinese technique which follows large number of pieces are put together to make elaborate models. This is known as 3D origami, sometimes made with paper money is a form of modular folding. Some Chinese refugees who are detained in America derived this technique, so this technique is often called Golden Venture folding, formed from the name of the ship which the Chinese used to came on.
Wet-folding:
Wet-folding is an origami technique which makes the edges of the sculpture gentle curves rather than geometric straight folds and flat surfaces. The paper is dampened so it can be moulded easily, the final model keeps its shape when it dries. It can be used, for instance, to produce very natural looking animal models. The adhesive used are become hard when dry and dissolves in water when wet and becoming soft and flexible, is often applied to the paper either at the pulp stage while the paper is being formed, or on the surface of a ready sheet of paper.
Pureland origami:
Pureland origami have the restrictions that only simple mountain/valley folds may be used. This technique is developed by John Smith in the 1970s to help inexperienced folders or those with kindergarten level skills. Some designers also like the challenge of creating within the very strict constraints.
Kirigami:
Kirigami is a technique which is by Japan and the term Kirigami is a Japanese term which means paper cutting. But the modernization of origami made the cutting techniques irrelevant after 1960-1970s. Even the cutting techniques were described in books but modern craftsmen no longer consider models with cuts to be origami. Most modern books of origami don’t even mention the cutting techniques.
Strip folding:
Strip folding is a combination of paper folding and paper weaving. A common example of strip folding is called the Lucky Star, also called Chinese lucky star, dream star, wishing star, or simply origami star. Another common fold is the Moravian Star which is made by strip folding in 3-dimensional design to include 16 spikes.
Techniques:
Many origami books, online courses are available by which anyone can learn how to make an origami. They describe the techniques from scratch to pro level. Video tutorials are often helpful now a day, you can find some in Spenowr also. From the basic folds from mountain, valley, pleats, reverse folds to difficult and complex level of folding like flapping bird, fish, fish base, waterbomb base you can learn over there.
Materials:
Almost any flat material can be used for folding, only requirement is that it should hold a crease. There are variety of paper available with different sizes ranging from 2.5 cm to 25 cm, variety of color as dual coloured, one sided coloured, patterned. These papers weights slightly less than copy paper which makes it good for making complex structures. Foil-backed paper, as its name implies, is a sheet of thin foil glued to a sheet of thin paper. Related to this is tissue foil, which is made by gluing a thin piece of tissue paper to kitchen aluminium foil. A second piece of tissue can be glued onto the reverse side to produce a tissue/foil/tissue sandwich. Foil-backed paper is available commercially, but not tissue foil; it must be handmade. Both types of foil materials are suitable for complex models.
Artisan papers such as unryu, gampi, kozo, saa, and abaca have long fibers and are often extremely strong. As these papers are floppy to start with, they are often backcoated or resized with methylcellulose or wheat paste before folding. Also, these papers are extremely thin and compressible, allowing for thin, narrowed limbs as in the case of insect models. Paper money from various countries is also popular to create origami with; this is known variously as Dollar Origami, Orikane, and Money Origami.
Tools:
Most of the fold are done using a flat surface and some folds are also made in air. People wonder that, no tools needed to form an origami, however some tools like bone folder, which allows sharp creases to be made in paper easily, paper clips can act as extra pairs of fingers and tweezers can be used for extremely small folds. Sometimes a ruler or ballpoint embosser to score the creases.
Today kindergarten to play group and upper knowledge group children are being taught origami making for entertainment and creativity development porpose.
