Orukami Origami by Himanshu Agrawal

I was introduced to the origami of Himanshu Agrawal via Flickr and enjoyed browsing photos of his work. Often he folds impressive figures designed by some of origami's finest creators, such as grandmaster Akira Yoshizawa, whose typically small peacock Himanshu made in honor of the recent 101st anniversary of Akira's birth.

Himanshu develops some very elaborate designs of his own as well, and especially enjoys large scale origami. For example, he made this four foot tall dragon that was featured in a Dell television commercial and newspaper ad.

He admits that newspaper is a difficult medium to fold because it rips easily. The dragon's body was composed of several very large squares and the eye-catching flame was an eighteen inch sheet of bright red kami, which is traditional origami paper.

And here is a much larger dragon Himanshu created - so large that he, along with the assistance of college engineering students, folded the 105 feet long and 30 feet tall figure in an airplane hanger! It earned him an award in the 2011 Limca Book of Records.

Himanshu, who lives in Mumbai, India, has been folding since he was a young boy. Delightfully modest about his work, Himanshu was recently invited to design a large-scale piece for an exhibition that commemorated sixty years of India-Japan relations.

Here he is pictured with the 25 foot long eastern dragon that required 3200 scales and more than six days of near-constant folding. Interestingly, it was constructed from discarded paper typically used for cigarette packaging - gold on one side, white on the other, and quite brittle to fold. Well worth the effort; I'm sure the shine was brilliant to see in person.

Himanshu's career is in marketing communications and voiceovers, but he finds time to introduce origami to others via demonstrations and classes. See many more examples of his work at Orukami (oru - to fold and kami - paper) and also on his Flickr stream.