Happy lunar new year! 2024 is the year of the dragon! If you do celebrate it, enjoy the family time and the festivities!

On the run up to this day, I was looking at my little origami dragon that I got a while ago (you can see this in my collection on the living room shelf) – I saw a man on the street just folding these dragons from memory and giving them out freely. I’ve folded one dragon before – a really complicated model back in 2012 – but I haven’t tried folding a dragon since. Well I thought it would be a good year to learn how!

I used the origami dragon tutorial by Jo Nakashima. He has many other variations of dragons that you can fold, but the v1 version looks the most similar to my dragon. I cut out a few squares of 20cm plain paper and began my learning process.

So the video tutorial is about 25 minutes long and incredibly clear to follow. You need to be very comfortable with reverse and sink folds, as it uses a lot of them. I struggled the most with the neck and wing parts when doing it the first time, so my first attempt was not so great. After spending about an hour reviewing the tutorial and the folding, I tried a second time and was very happy with my own origami dragon!

For full transparency, here is my first attempt side-by-side with my second. I had creased the wings incorrectly and did not get the horns to appear. The arms weren’t folded over either! Not sure how I managed to miss that part out. I also folded certain parts over a bit too often and ended up tearing the paper, so it was struggling to stand. It is very important to make precise folds in models like these!

After folding the red dragons, I then attempted to fold the dragon from scratch and without the video guide. I wanted to be able to commit an impressive design to memory! And I almost managed it as well. I wasn’t able to fully remember the neck and body folds. I used green paper this time because you do get depictions of green dragons! But as it is Lunar New Year, red is the lucky colour and the first one I made!

The one of my shelf uses really nice embossed paper that has been wet folded for really nice sculpting with the model, so it looks very different to mine. I would like to try that some day but it is a very advanced technique.

Materials used:
– 20cm square red/green paper