DIY Tangerine Peeling Art for The Quarantined.

DIY tangerine peeking art

You’ve done all the puzzles in the house. You’ve cleaned out the junk drawer, replaced the batteries in your carbon monoxide detector and built multiple forts from the sofa cushions and bedsheets. The Quarantine orders to keep from spreading or catching the Coronavirus have you bored to tears and you’re not even one week in. So, now what?

DIY Tangerine Peeling Art

A ram carved from a single tangerine peel

Assuming you’ve tired of streaming movies and the house is already in livable order, how about getting one of those 5lb. bags of Tangerines or Clementines or Halos – or whatever you call them, a sharp lil’ knife and attempting the Japanese Art of Tangerine Peeling?

This craft called ‘ tangerine peeling art – Mikamuki-‘  is to be executed with one simple rule: to peel just one tangerine without adding or removing any part from it. The peel cannot break. If you want to remove a certain part, that part has to be used in another place. That is how you create a shape considering the other parts of the tangerine, then you may seek ‘harmony ‘with the surroundings.

With the help of Yoshihiro Okada’s videos and visuals, you could be churning out horses, prawns and birds of all kinds within minutes. Okay, maybe more like hours… but that’s the point, isn’t it? Not to mention leaving behind all those pre-peeled tangerines for the kids.

Yoshihiro Okada has been freehand peeling tangerines as art since 2006 when he accidentally removed a peel that resembled a scorpion.

Okada’s accidental “scorpion” peel in 2006 inspired him

This inspired him to perfect it and begin attempting others. He has since published how-to books on the subject, but only in Japanese and Korean. The books were such big sellers, that he then came out with a DVD, workshops and even made tiny rubber toys in the likeness of 5 of the peels that were sold in capsules in the vending machines called Gachapon.

Below are 5 examples to attempt with little visual charts I put together using the pages from the books. Despite the fact that you may not be able to read the language, if you’ve got good visualization skills, you can still learn from the images I’ve shared with you here.

Horse:

tangerine peeling

Dove:

tangerine peel tutorial

Rabbit:

rabbit from tangerine peel

Shrimp:

Good luck! Send us pics if you try this. Because otherwise we won’t believe you.
tangerine peeling on if its hip its here

You can see more videos on Yoshihiro Okada’s YouTube channel here

Visit his website here for more information