Origami Ducky

The next origami design I will be crafting today will still come out of the second book I used, "Origami Farm Animals" by Lisa Miles. While this book is a child reading level, the origami (to me at least) might as well be rocket science. In the beginning I had thought that maybe origami would be a fun little craft or hobby I could have, but all this has done is make me hate origami for my lack of skill in it. The sad thing about this is that this simple form of art has been around so long and mastered by many, but I still struggle to make basic folds. The author just makes me feel worse about how many people are good at origami by saying "Origami has been popular in Japan for hundreds of years and is now loved all around the world" (Miles, 4). This basically means anyone can do it, except me.

Today I will be crafting an origami duck, which is ranked by the book as an easy thing to create. Of course, this ranking means absolutely nothing to me as I am trash at origami. On that note, let's get started.

STEPS

Step 1: The first thing you want to do in creating a duck is to make a kite fold. this is no one step fold however. The instructions on this fold at the beginning of the book include a multitude of basic folds in order to create this one base fold, mostly consisting of valley folds (Miles, 6). This is what the instructed kite fold should look like.


Step 2: The next step is to valley fold the top corners in to meet the center crease. This looks like it jumped a few steps ahead because the last picture was displaying the valley folds unfolded. In reality, they are only one step apart.


Step 3: The third step is to take both flaps and fold them in towards the center fold. This creates the shape of the body of the duck. The next steps were much more difficult for me.


Step 4: The fourth step is to create what will eventually be the tail of the duck. This step was confusing for me because the inside reverse fold is not well captured in pictures, so it took me multiple tries to complete. You do this to both sides so that there is now both a head and a tail.


Step 5: This is basically the last real step. Another inside reverse fold is applied here to one of the sides to create the beak of the duck. Mine came out weird as the neck is too short, making the body of the duck seem extremely large. Then, add a black dot to the headed side to represent eyes.


On a scale of quality, I would say this is smack dab in the middle between the origami pig and the origami candy cane. This still looks pretty bad, but not nearly as bad as the train wreck of the origami candy cane. This week, I would like to know what all of you guys think or origami as a whole? Would you personally consider this as an art form? Why or why not?

 Let me know in the comments below. Thanks for reading my blog.


Miles, Lisa. Origami Farm Animals. New York, New York: Gareth Stevens Publishing, 2014. Print.