How to Draw Japan

About this book

Draw the folded form itself — not the toy on the shelf, not the decoration, the form. This book teaches 100 origami forms of Japan in six unchanging steps: the square sheet and its ruling creases; the eight bases every model is built from; the traditional crane at full span and nineteen more birds; frogs, foxes, elephants, fish and five face studies in the beast chapter; tulips, a twisted rose, the masu box and a dozen useful things; and finally the folds themselves at full size — valley and mountain creases, reverse folds, the sink fold, cross-sections where you can count a base's layers, and the crease patterns of the crane and the frog unfolded flat, the whole animal as a map of lines. Every lesson declares its sheet and its creases before a line is drawn, draws the form as facets, points and layers on a plain specimen board — no hands, no scenery, no colour — and ends with a practice page. It is a drawing book, not a folding book: it teaches you to see how a single square of paper becomes a crane, and to draw that becoming.