Origami Owls (Designs by Hideo Komatsu & Stephen Weiss)
Hello everyone! I am back from a short hiatus 
I really did miss posting on this blog. I was away in Indianapolis for the long weekend – 4th July…visiting my fiancé. It was a good little holiday; it’s a pity the rains dampened the 4th of July fireworks, though. 
Anyway, back to origami. I have been experimenting with different designs of owls these past few days. I tried my hands at folding the Stephen Weiss model from the book – Origami Zoo: An Amazing Collection of Folded Paper Animals
Stephen Weiss’ Owl
This particular model of the owl is relatively easy to fold and can be categorized in the lower intermediate category. One point to be noted here is that the folds you make should be crisp and firm. This model also makes use of the “pivot fold” which is something I have rarely come across.
For folders who do not have access to this origami book – Origami Zoo: An Amazing Collection of Folded Paper Animals
All the steps are clearly depicted along with areas / folds you need to watch out for. The best paper to use for this model is a brown shade of origami paper, square shaped and approx 6” to 9” in size. Ideally, it should be single – side colored paper, so that your final model will have the ‘back’, head and tail of the owl in brown and the ‘chest’ of the owl in white. Even if you do have duo colored paper of brown and yellow (or something very similar to the color of an owl) you can use such a kind to fold this model.
You need to start off with the light shade or the white color side of the paper facing you.
Hideo Komatsu’s Owl
This model of an owl is slightly trickier than Stephen Weiss’. It took me a lot longer to fold this one too, but that more got to do with the fact that I had to redo a few steps towards the end in order to correct a few things. The folds I found most tricky were those in the 2nd video (the links to which I have posted just below this post’s text), which were to shape the owl in the required form. I was quite pleased with the fast that the paper didn’t crease all that much inspite of the rework in a few places. 
How to fold Hideo Komatsu’s horned owl:
A youtube contributor has recorded and uploaded 2 very detailed instructional videos on folding this model. However, some folds in the 2nd video (the link below) needs to be understood and followed properly in order to avoid crumpling the sheet of paper. I hope you find these videos helpful:
How to fold Hideo Komatsu’s Horned Owl - Part 1
How to fold Hideo Komatsu’s Horned Owl - Part 2
For both of the models in the image above, I have used single side colored (orange) origami paper which is square shaped and measures 9″ in size.
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