As we all have probably heard before, everyone learns differently. Some of us needs visuals, some of us need hands-on instruction, and some of us just rely on time to let us adjust to our new-found knowledge. For me, origami was always fairly simple. If I had the proper instructions, I could make virtually anything. Which was great! ....For a while, at least. And then I started to get bored of the typical designs that I made. I worked on memorizing as many new designs as I could, but a new idea began to form in my head: what if there was a better way to become good at origami? What if memorization and continuous practice wasn't all it took? Of course, both of those can be greatly useful to the origami artist, but it's not even close to the end of your growth as an artist.
I began looking into Robert J. Lang's origami methods. As you may know, Lang is a profound origami artist who uses math and science to create many of his designs. His theories were incredible, and of course I tried them but... they were not exactly the best choice for me. Nevertheless, as I watched his presentations, he sparked yet another idea within me: his concept of getting to the base of your design.
So basically, his idea is that you choose something to create, decide on the "tree" design of it, which is basically like the stick figure, you make the stick figure into a base, and then you make basic folds from there to finish the piece.
Now, this may seem fairly simple, and most of it is, but getting to that base is not very easy. When I watched Lang's presentation, I imagined in my head how to make the bases for designs. It seemed so easy; just take a piece of paper and make it into something. But, getting to that base is, in fact, incredibly difficult. And that takes a lot of experience.
I began to give up on using Lang's technique, but one last time I got another idea: if you could make generic bases that could each, in general, be turned into the last step of Lang's process. So basically a bunch of different bases that you could memorize and choose from to create numberless possibilities. For example, a four-legged base with a head and tail could be used to make both dogs and cats as long as you just made the necessary folds as you bounced to the last step.
Overall, that's what The Origami Approach is all about. Now things might not look crazy amazing and interesting at first, but after a while I believe the bases will be able to grow onto each other and become something that could almost be called extraordinary. The point of writing about all of this? Because I want people, and especially myself, to see that creating your own origami designs isn't entirely impossible, and getting to the point where you can make almost any design from memory might not be as difficult as it seems to be. So hopefully you are as excited as I am to begin with this project! It won't be an easy one, I'm sure of that, but I believe that it will work out incredibly in the end.(:
-Emily Collins
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