Our hobby is expensive enough. When you come across a good thing cheap, well you just have to share it. Lately I have found a good source of paint at a relatively cheap price. Some of you may find this to he old news. The paints are the bottles of craft paints in the plastic bottles at many craft stores or craft sections of stores like Walmart. The paints are acrylics and come in 2 or 4 ounce plastic squeeze bottles. I have used these paints successfully on all sorts of surfaces and even have air brushed them (they work equally well on plastic models). They do seem to work best over a base coat or primer coat. The paints come in flip top, plastic squeeze bottles which makes it easier to measure out just what you need and to also mix colors consistently. They come in a wide range of colors. What is nice is if you do dry brushing or highlighting your lighter color may already be mixed for you. For example I find Timberline Green is a pretty good match for lighter color US olive drab (for uniforms for example). They also make a Timberline Green Light so, viola, your dry brush already mixed. Because you can squeeze out what you need and quickly close the bottle I find the paints don't dry out as quickly as bottled acrylics or enamel paints. You need to take a look at the color, either on a chip or in the bottle. They don't make a Panzer Grey for example, but Dreamcoat's Charcoal is a dead ringer. The paints are cheap, especially if you find them on sale. I have found them as cheap as 50 cents for a two ounce bottle! More normally expect to pay 1 to 2 bucks a bottle, but compare the amount with what you get in some of the more traditional acrylics. There doesn't seem to be any difference I have found among the brands. I have used DecoArt, Americana, Delta DreamCoat and Accent brands without problem. They all seem to mix with each other well. I have heard that there are some differences, for example some of the blacks are a bit more transparent then others. The paint can be thinned with water without any problems. As with all acrylics drying time can be a problem, they can dry too fast! This is especially true if you intend to airbrush them. A retarder or extender added to the paint does increase drying time (I use FolkArt Extender for acrylic paint, but there are others). Few problems. If you do airbrush it keep water handy, you will have to blow out your airbrush frequently as the paint will dry quickly in the tip (but then I have similar problems with acrylics made for models). The paint wont be ground as fine. Once again this will be more noticeable with airbrushing. Because it wont be ground as fine and dries quickly, brush strokes showing on larger surfaces may be a problem. And especially over plastics, you do need a primer or base coat (once again similar to what happens with model acrylics). They are readily available, cheap, and they work for me. Bottom line, for a few bucks pick up a few bottles and give them a try. Back to Rebel Yell No. 21 Table of Contents Back to Rebel Yell List of Issues Back to Master Magazine List © Copyright 2001 by HMGS South This article appears in MagWeb.com (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other articles from military history and related magazines are available at http://www.magweb.com