The Origami Forum

Hello I am just looking for advice in painting kami because I want to make pride-themed models for my friends at some point and I have been using water color paints to experiment but I was curious if there is a better option available for coloring the plain white kami I have I am just looking for suggestions of any kind

It depends a bit on what exactly you want to achieve. There are a ton of options how to paint Kami. My preferred way is to use an airbrush and highly pigmented opaque airbrush colours. The main advantage of that method is that the paper doesn't get wet but only slightly moist because the fine mist from the airbrush dries almost instantly, allowing to paint the paper without the colour seeping through the paper. If the paper is thick enough that moisture is no problem, it is also possible to use a sponge to apply the colours by tapping it on. That's faster and less of a mess.
For pride themed models dry brushing the models afterwards with some gold on the edges might also give some nice effects. An example of this technique can be found at https://youtu.be/q38hQPuOt5g

Honestly? I would use a brush and colored "India" ink, personally. It dries to be permanent and water-resistant. Just be careful not to wet your brush down too much, since kami isn't as thick as proper watercolor paper.

I recommend acrylic paints because, like watercolor, they are easy to work with and clean up, but once dried, acrylics are not resoluble in water