Today I participated in a lovely session at CZT After Hours where Marina Solar conducted us creating this four point star. She did it in color over black, but I just had to do it in black pen over white paper. What a fun and enjoyable session! Here's another view of the piece: I used black inking pen 01 and graphite pencil for shading. I also used a light gray inking pen to enhance the corners of the shading. Feel free to pin or share these images. Remember that Copyright 2024 Eni Oken   ..read more

I’ve been away on a family reunion, during which I barely had any time to draw. Here is one piece, though, that I managed to make. The challenge was to create an asymmetric pop-up composition using mostly V-folds. Not sure it’s my favorite composition for pop-ups, but it was fun to see how it came along. Here is a little video clip of the popup: Here you can see how this works with a couple of V-folds facing each other (although they do not have to be part of the same piece of paper): Tangles are Moonpie, Mooka, Fescu, Icanthis, a little Purk and Tipple (all Zentangle). Here’s a close-up ..read more

My second little booklet with samples and experiments of of pop-up mechanisms. Everybody needs a good reference library right! This one has mostly angle folds (V-folds), so I robbed some of the previous booklet to add here. I especially like the double V-folds that point at each other and make the extensions (arms) rotate wildly. Here are some of my favorite ones: Moving Arms, as explained by Duncan Birmingham in his excellent book and also Pop-up channel. A series of V-folds placed one inside the other forming a kind of repetitive scale pattern. Two V-folds pointing at each other with som ..read more

The last Thursday Art Clubbers and I completed Part 3 of the Bailarine Pop-up class. This is the last project that I taught before closing the club and it will soon be available on my Teachable Video Shop. In Part 3, we finally glued all elements down on the card: I used a little mockup pop-up to explain the very specific way you must fold and glue pop-up elements for the card to lay flat: After gluing down the pop-up mechanisms we needed to work on the base card. We tangled on the base with black pen and white gel pen. For shading we used black watercolor pencil blended with a waterbrush ..read more

Another pop-up card, this time using an M-fold with some attached muscled with little added feature extensions. Tangles are Toodles, Mooka, Fescu (all Zentangle) and also Garlic Cloves/Ravel (Jacquelien Bredenoord). Love this one! Here is a little video clip of the popup: The M-fold is a type of fold where you have three V-folds on a single mechanisms. It makes the card quite bulky, but offers several opportunities to add inserts and features. Here are some points of view of the pop-up: Feel free to pin or share these images. Remember that all Copyright is 2024 Eni Oken   ..read more

The last two Thursdays Art Clubbers and I have been having fun making tangled Pop-ups - the LAST class of the Art Club before I go on my sabbatical: Bailarine Pop-up In Part 1 we learned about V-folds, a type of mechanism used in Pop-up books and cards: After showing a ton of examples, then we created a large panel using Bailarine (Eni Oken) and Tink (Carole Ohl): In Part 2, we continued exploring V-folds, this time with attached features, created separately. This time we also added Toodles tangle (Zentangle): In Part 3 next week, we’ll finish adding insert, this time attaching them to sma ..read more

Continuing my new obsession with pop-ups and paper mechanics. While practicing some tangles I created this tiny 3x3 inches handmade paper pop-up card using Zentangle tangles such as Cadent, Nik (Bunny Wright) and Mooka. Here is a little video clip of the popup: Video by Eni Oken. This one was particularly fun because it was created in an intuitive way, not particularly planned or designed. I was playing with a new mechanism and just started adding pieces: Gradually it started to grow and and grow and I got more into tangling each piece, very much as if the pop-up card were the string. Here ..read more

Last Thursday the Art Clubbers and I had a very fun class on how to create this landscape ZIA using two different tones of inking pens. We started by using a composite string: We then developed the main “plants” using Organicize techniques such as “make into a branch” and grafting: Here are some examples of crazy plants using similar approach: After the foreground pieces were made we created the background using foreshortening techniques: We also worked on the shading of the background Here is the final picture after all the shading was completed, using tangles Dillo-tant (Lisa Goldman ..read more

Here is another pop-up I created before leaving on my recent vacation. This one uses a combination of Naaki (Nadine Roller) and Drawings. This is a combination that my students and I explored in Tangle Combos - and also a bit of Moonpie (Zentangle). Looks like a fish tail of sorts. Here is a little video clip of the popup: Video by Eni Oken. Music @iksonmusic (Youth). Here are some close-ups of the pop-up: Feel free to pin or share these images. Remember that all Copyright is 2024 Eni Oken   ..read more

I've been away for a family event, but before I went, I created a couple of pop-ups. I’m simply fascinated with this kind of paper engineering, and am hoping to learn more about it. Here is a mock-up study that I did while trying to learn more about pop-ups: And here is a little movie of a pop-up using tangle Bailarine (my own), Tink (Carole Ohl) and Toodles (Zentangle). Pop-up created by Eni Oken. Music by @iksonmusic - See you Here are some close-ups of the pop-up: Feel free to pin or share these images. Remember that all Copyright is 2024 Eni Oken   ..read more