i had a little bit of kakishibu leftover from a pouch of it and as i've been playing around with making my own acrylic paint for marbling, i wanted to see if i could make a kakishibu paint and marble with it. turns out: sorta! if you wait long enough!

i tried from 1:1 (acrylic matte medium : kakishibu) up to 1:8. as you'll see below, on day 1, it really wasn't until you got to 1:8 that it started too look anything like kakishibu's beautiful brown color. as you will also notice, the paint lines start to get fuzzy: the kakishibu "paint" is really messy and pollutes the tank. it would benefit from being strained with a fine cheesecloth, i think.

however, if you wait for the kakishibu to more fully oxidize (these pictures taken after 1 year), you'll see that 1:4 actually produces some very nice kakishibu browns. 1:8 is obviously darker, but if you were to make a lot of sheets, 1:4 would be much more economical.

Day 1

1:1

1:2

1:4

1:6

1:8

1 Year Later

1:1

1:2

1:4

1:6

1:8

last updated: 2026-05-03 10:51:50