The Origami Forum

hi,

I have some kraft paper colored red on one side, (the one i used for danbo), and i want to color the brown side to white. what do you suggest for coloring, to have white-red paper?

Acrylic paint?

I'd recommend acrylic paint. Personally, it can be your best friend sometimes. You gotta get certain types though! I got a bunch of it from friends of ours who used to run a day-care center thing.
Certain types of it can dry and almost feel like the paint on your walls (not friendly to fingers -.-) but then there's the shiny/metallic colors. My favorite is "pearl white" because it's slightly metallic-ey looking and is very pleasant to fold because it's a different type of paint. Just look for metallic or shiny colors because they dry extremely different from other acrylic paints. And the reason I also recommend acrylic is because it's so cheap XD

wouldn't it make paper thicker?

No, I don't think so.

PauliusOrigami wrote:wouldn't it make paper thicker?

If you do it correctly, it makes it stiffer but not thicker. I honestly think its annoying to fold with paper treated with acrylic, but if the paper is really thin (such as sekishu, single or double tissue) it works pretty good for insects. I usually mix it with MC before applying it to thin it out, but I've painted the paper with straight acryllic a few times before.

its a kraft 70 cm, and one side colored red already, so it would be like 80 gsm already.
Will it be suitable for naoki taledas santa after painting one more layer?

There is no telling without trying - there is almost no chance anyone here will have the same materials you'll have... Just make a few tests on samples...

Does acrylic paint cracks or worns out at creases or vertices?

I used acrylic paints on several types of paper (foil, terry tissue foil, tant) and really like the effect it produces. never had any problems with cracks or wearing out.

Any tips for using this paint? Havent it used before, so any tips would be welcome (do you need to dilute with water? Or you just paint with a thick paint from a stock?)

As I said earlier, I dilute it with MC, but if you can't apply MC then just dilute it with water. Seems to work the best for me.

You may have experimented already and answered your own questions, but I've painted with acrylic a lot. You can dilute with water just fine. Works great if you're going for pastel-like colors. If you want a dark solid color you may need to lay it on thick without much dilution. This will thicken the paper a bit. I imagine you'd have to keep it fairly thick to get white on brown, but I'm not too familiar with the paper you're using. In my experience, if you keep it thick it WILL crack and wear a little at vertices, but not too badly.

In my (fairly limited) experience, cheap "school" acrylics feel nasty, look nasty and tend to crack, where as artist's acrylic is much better all round (no cracks appeared folding the ancient dragon, and I used a lot of paint). I believe there are mediums for thinning acrylic without diluting the colour but I haven't tried any myself, art materials don't seem to come cheap! And I thought origami would be a cheap hobby...

I agree, the artists' acrylic paints are much better for painting paper. You don't need the super-expensive stuff, but don't go for the kids craft stuff. The cheap paints have lots of fillers and tend to require several coats of paint, which would probably make the paper much harder to fold. The artists' paints have a lot more pigment, so you can use a much thinner layer. In general, it takes a lot more paint to lighten the color of the paper than it does to darken it, so going from brown to white may still make the paper more difficult to fold.