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Black Friday has come and gone and during that period one of my FLGS had a buy one get one free sale on Bolt Action. Seeing as though I had a buddy interested in the 8th Army I decided to see if they had anything related to it. A hundred or so bucks later I walked out with a DAK starter army and an 8th Army starter army. Not a bad deal at all.

However, I wanted to keep the price down overall and as we all know one of the more expensive parts of the hobby is the paint itself. You can get high quality stuff for around $5 or more, but I wanted to go cheaper. How cheap you may ask, and to that I ask my own question "Did you know that Wal Mart has crafting paint?"

Yes that's right I will be using craft paint that costs less than $1 a bottle to paint this army. So far the list is as follows.

Apple Barrel: Ochre
Apple Barrel: Kelly Green
Craftsmart: Olive Green
Craft Smart: Mustard Yellow
Craft Smart: Taupe

The project will try to answer several questions; how well does the paint apply without a primer, how well is it mixed, does it glob up finer details, how much do I have to thin it, and how well does it hold up against other examples?

After doing some research I found that quality control wasn't the best for really any army and the shades of yellow found on DAK armor varied im shades from a brighter yellow to more of a yellow-brown and uniforms tended to bleach, with some units getting the yellow uniforms from Italy. I will be aiming for an olive green tunic with a khaki pants or olive green all over. The Pak 88 in the box will be a brighter yellow and the Pz. III in the kit will have a brighter yellow turret with a brownish yellow hull and chassis. The desired effect is to make it look like two non functional tanks were put together to make one functional tank.

Wish me luck, pics to follow.

I know not using primer will be a problem. Primer is going to help coats of paint stick in the long run and your going to be picking these models up and handling them on a regular basis. I take these craft paints are acrylic ?


I use cheaper acrylic paints from similar stores in the UK but only for terrain projects.

You're gonna need a spray can of primer (my go-to has been Rust-Oleum American Accents) and a clear gloss/matte spray to seal 'em. Both can be found cheap in the home section of Walmart, Target, etc.

The craft paints will go on very matte, which for cloth uniforms can be just right. I'd recommend sticking with model paint for any skin, however, to give it that proper satin finish.

Craft paints will need to be thinned a good bit - not quite as thin as you would with model paints, as they tend to separate if thinned too much.

Only used craft paints myself once for terrain and didn’t like the look of it, now I use tester pots for that but if you are set on using craft paints on minisi I t might be worth checking out Luke’s aps on YouTube.
Pretty sure he has a couple of vids on how to get the best from craft paints.

Alright I am taking everything into consideration, I was asking a buddy of mine who uses craft paints what his choice for skin was, he hasn't replied. Then again he paints space marines and they don't flash too much flesh.

The yellow came out a little brighter than expected but I am okay with it, it reminds me of a British camo and I can work with that. As far as the dark color I mixed the yellow, burnt umber, and taupe at a ratio of 50/25/25. This mixture went on an unprimed part pretty well which surprised me. As far as the uniforms go, yes the matte rocks on the uniform and kelly green is a good highlight for olive green in my opinion.

To answer the question, these are acrylic paints and I do have some tamiya thinner available.

I also have Army Painter white primer in a spray, I think that would be good for the yellow and okay for the rest. For the most part I am painting the main parts as they sit on the sprue, that way I don't mess up an entire model if it doesn't look right, just a part of it.

Painted front of torso on the left was painted with me forgetting to shake up the bottle of olive green. Models have some patches of where my brush slipped but those can be fixed. Will be painting rest of pak 88 after it is primed, too many nooks and crannies to have paint not sticking well. Fun fact, it took 4 coats to get the paint to stay that way on the turret and gunshield.

Just an idea instead of the Tamiya thinner I’ve heard about people using blue screen wash. You could give that a shot first, don’t get me wrong the Tamiya thinner is great and I use it when airbrushing with their paints.
Just not sure how well it would work with craft paints, but hey as you’ve got some there’s no harm in mixing some up and playing around.

Haven't heard of Blue screen wash, might have to give it a google.

Models have been primed with white from The Army Painter. I like it mainly because it smells like a ripe banana and that's probably one of the least offensive odors around.

Some viewers may be wondering as to my sources for the color tone of the paint and to that I will say that I have a DAK Kar98 cleaning kit and a small book on various panzer divisions during the war. The colors there range in tone and camo markings. One thing I am eager to do is to add a German flag to the engine deck of the tank. Of course with that I will most likely opt for the Iron Cross variant of the flag as opposed to a full on Swastika. Might get less looks from others in the game store. So if anyone knows where I can get a 1/56 scale WW2 German iron cross flag I would appreciate them telling me.

Green stuff the flag mate. Job done,freehanding the iron cross will be simple enough. Also greenstuff will follow the shape of your vehicle, just make sure you roll it out thin enough.

Most of the tarps, blankets and airial recognition flags on my American vehicles are done with greenstuff.
You could print out a flag I guess. It’s not something I’ve done to go on to a vehicle but a lot of historical bods print of banners and such.

I bought some Apple Barrel paints, but have not had the opportunity to try them. The Folk Art paints are a little fiddly, getting them to the right consistency has been difficult. Once you hit it, they are fine.

I really like the Delta Ceramcoat paints. A little more at $1.27 or so a bottle, but JoAnn's has 20% coupons, or 40% off single items. Honestly, I like them just as much as my GW paints.

If you were doing army painter white already why not do army painter desert yellow get 90% of the painting done?

 Desubot wrote:
If you were doing army painter white already why not do army painter desert yellow get 90% of the painting done?

Main reason is because I had the white from previous projects and I didn't want to buy more primer. Another reason would be that I am painting both infantry and armor and infantry for the DAK had green and khaki instead of a desert yellow color. I know that there's a time period where they did have the yellow uniforms, but I am digging the green/khaki because it breaks up the monotony of the all yellow. My brother is painting Germans and they're all feldgrau... completely feldgrau and it kind of annoys me.

Paint was also inconsistent in quality due to different sources, I wanted to try to reflect that.

Some more photos with a simple camo pattern.

Certainly very yellow

Way too bright

Yep while you are right about the different paint supplies I cant help but be reminded of Girls und Panzer by the yellow you’ve gone for bud.

I do not have the reference book in front of me at the moment, however it did have a very yellow tank in there as part of the DAK, mind you it was a captured Matilda, but in the print is was a solid yellow.

This is the cover and a similar type of book. As far as I have read, color had poor quality control and of course also faded over time due to sun exposure.

Go steady with some of the reference books. After all the colour plates are made up of guess work from black and white photos, as an owner of quite a few reference books I can honestly say some are miles off. Mig productions have some very good ones out, I’m using the waffen as book now as my go too book. While you are correct about paint supplies I still think that yellow is way out.
Yeah you might of seen an odd pic of it in the book, chances are the colour plate is too bleached out. The Afrika corps would have been a lighter yellow but not that bright. But hey if you are happy painting them like that then crack on bud, it’s your models and hobby at the end of the day as long as you are happy with em.

I didn't know that about the reference books! I think I will keep these ones painted as is and try to either make it a dunkelgelb or sand yellow in the future. I am happy with the brown I achieved with mixing the colors though, surprised with how well the paints came together. The brown is a different company and one thing that the mix did do was make the mix more opaque.

I wonder if any nations did have that kind of yellow then.

If you can find a model reference book then you should be fine bud, like I said I’m using the mig productions waffen as book as my go to book.
Also the osprey books are very good too, there are some good ones out but also some crap one, I’ve a few where the colour plates look to be from the 70s and are are way off.
As for the yellow well anythings possible I guess I mean bovington tank museum had a jagdtiger painted bright baby blue with bright yellow spots although it looked nasty and of never seem that colour scheme anywhere else or again.

I haven't been able to do much in the way of updating this recently due to some life events. Very happy life events, but ones that definitely take time away from this project.

I thank everyone for their critiques though and will most likely be switching back to some of the more choice paints(model masters dunkelgelb for example) for some of my later projects. It would also be nice to see how my mixing fares against Model Masters.

Overall I have finished some infantry to the limit that I am willing to call them finished. I will add photos later, but I know for a fact that I used brown for their boots and webbing and that they sure as heck used black. Please forgive that, I had completely forgotten to refill my stock of black paint after finding out that my previous stock had dried up completely due to being left open ever so slightly for about a month.

Other projects have also been added that require a bit more attention as well. I am making terrain for our FLGS group that includes some hills, rock croppings, and some country roads. First time making terrain so I've been watching the Terrain Tutor on youtube. I do have some photos of that and have stuck with using mainly wal mart or cheaper material there.

Ah you’ll get a lot from watching mels terrain vids bud. He’s a cracking chap. Been a fan of his work for a long time now. As for me I love building terrain. Even more so than building countless infantry lol

Oh most definitely, especially with his Big Burma Build series coming out. Was wanting to make some Pacific Theater terrain and this is a good start. Goal is to eventually make a board with ~15-20% water surface with those stilt houses and some nice trees. Main goal is to also make a wrecked Zero as a terrain piece(thinking crashed into a water feature).

Major project would be trying to make a ship board, or an LST. But that is for when I get better at it.