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Showing posts from April, 2020

Windmills Origami Tessellation

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After some struggles, I've come up with a new design. New to me anyway. It's typical of my style - close together and circular. I've learned that I create and fold origami tessellations much more relaxingly and skillfully at work than I do at home. Better lighting. Better desk/seating. Less distractions. Since the corona virus I've been furloughed from work for several weeks. So I've been doing some origami at home. I can't just stop. You may as well ask me to stop my heart from beating. So I sit at my kitchen table and grumble and complain as I work the paper that normally bends so easily to my will. Eventually, the paper relents. I almost exclusively use a 32 pleat grid because I use somewhat small paper. I also have very small fingers. Even small paper is no mean feat to fold. So I try to come up with patterns that can repeat nicely within those constraints. This pattern was easy enough to conceive and tessellate. It was not, however, easy to

Dance of the Triangles Origami Tessellation

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I'm not entirely sure if the method employed in this origami tessellation is considered a form of flagstoning. Although it's folded somewhat differently, it has a similar feel and end result. I've folded this odd triangular shape before in recreating other people's tesses. I just wanted to keep it simple and see if I could get a really clean, tight pattern. So it's just the little triangles and the bigger odd ones repeating. The odd shape triangles are made by alternating between two grid pleats, one offset until it becomes a closed shape. Pyramids on the rear create the negative shape triangles on the front. .  In this particular technique the little triangles are not twists. Picture the triangle inside of a hexagon. Then you invert the edges that make it a hexagon, leaving a triangle on top. The same is done to the edges of the other shape which are offset from the grid.

Six Degrees of Intersection

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The beginning of this idea came to me quite easily. How to make it tessellate I struggled with for a bit. But when I get an idea in my sights, there's very little that's going to stop me from bringing it to fruition. It's inspired by the tessellations of others that use the same technique.Ben Parker and Arseniy K come to mind. It was a fussy fold. But it taxed the folder much more than the paper. I took a pic of the crease pattern for those that want it.

Octagons and Diamonds Origami Tessellation

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Here's a new tessellation. It feels similar, yet different to others I've encountered. It's a square grid tessellation using a 32 division grid. While my first major tessellation was Eric Gjerde's spread hexes , Fujimoto's clover tessellation was probably the very next one I went on to tackle. Between the two of them, my love of the art was permanently cemented in my psyche. This is much less complex than either, but still a wonderful exercise in the art of geometric paper folding.

Corona Stars Origami Tessellation

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I was fiddling around with triangle and rhombus twists again. Oh, rhombus twists, how you fascinate me. I'm a little lost since work closed. Coronavirus sucks! I do some of my best origami there. But the muse beckons just the same. I landed on a nice triangle based tessellation that is new to me. Three rhombuses off of a triangle. Repeat. They eventually come full circle to create open back hexagon twists on the other side. Quite accidentally, the backlit pic of this tessellation reminds me of the coronavirus. It was not intentional. At least, not on a conscious level. It didn't look that way as I was working on it. But the camera often shows a different view than the human eye sees. If you look carefully at the center you can see the initial triangle and the triad of rhombuses that emanate from it. The unlit photo below shows a very different view of the same tessellation. It's nothing ground breaking, but it's a pretty nice finished product.

Asterisk Tessellation

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I obsessed over this idea for a while before I finally came up with a working solution. Somehow it seemed much cooler in my mind that it does in pictures. It was kinda tricky to execute. I did the hex twists on the back first. Then I pushed out the spaces between the pointy rectangles. Some double wide triangles on the back were coaxed into place with a few small folds to allow the hexes to remain flat. It's a nice pattern, but I was disappointed with how it backlit. On the plus side, I've not encountered it before. So, it may be new, or at least, uncommon.