Most people find AK Interactive the same way. They’ve just finished a Tiger or a Sherman, it looks clean and shiny and a bit like a toy, and somebody on a forum tells them to try Streaking Grime. A month later they own six bottles of weathering products and have started looking at every rusty gutter on the street a little differently.

AK makes far more than weathering, though. There’s paint, primer, thinner, varnish, putty, diorama textures, markers, brushes and even an airbrush, and the Art Spices collection runs to roughly 350 products, which is a lot to scroll through if you don’t know what you’re after.

This is a rough map of the AK Interactive range at Art Spices, sorted by what each part actually does on the workbench, plus a few opinions on where I’d start.

The paint: 3GEN acrylics

The core of the range is the 3GEN acrylic line, which Art Spices splits across three listings covering colours 1 to 231. That’s a huge spread, from plain whites and Rubber Black through oranges and purples to a long run of military greens with names like Gunship Green and Extra Dark Green. The paint is water-based and works by brush or airbrush, and AK sells its own 3GEN Thinner and a 3GEN Primer in white, grey and black to go with it.

If you airbrush, I’d pick up the thinner at the same time. Plain water works after a fashion, but the matching thinner tends to spray more predictably, and the 3GEN Perfect Cleaner saves a lot of swearing when the needle clogs halfway through a camo pattern.

Weathering, which is what AK is known for

This is the part that built the brand’s reputation. Streaking Grime is the famous one, a thin enamel you dot under bolts and hatches and then pull downward with a damp brush until it looks like years of rain have run off the hull. Rust Streaks does the same job in orange. Dark Brown Wash settles into panel lines and around rivets, while the Filters tint a whole surface slightly, so a flat green tank stops looking like it came out of one tin. They’re even labelled by job, like Blue for Panzer Grey or Dark Brown for NATO Tanks.

Then there are the heavier effects. Crusted Rust Deposits comes in light, medium and dark, Moss Deposits adds a green bloom low on a wall or a wheel arch, and the 35 ml pigments, with names like North Africa Dust and Burnt Jet Engine, go on dry and get locked down afterwards with Pigment Fixer.

Product	What it does	Good on
Streaking Grime	Vertical grime streaks	Tank hulls, fuselages
Dark Brown Wash	Darkens panel lines and recesses	Armour, vehicles
Filters	Shifts the overall colour tone	Single-colour camouflage
Crusted Rust Deposits	Thick, textured rust	Exhausts, tracks, wrecks
Pigments, 35 ml	Dry dust and mud	Lower hulls, bases
Super Chrome	Mirror-like metal finish	Engine parts, trim, sci-fi

Dioramas and bases

More than a quarter of the collection is diorama material, which surprises people. The Terrains textures, such as Muddy Ground, Dark Earth and Sandy Desert, come in 250 ml tubs and go on with an old brush or a palette knife, and Puddles is a 60 ml gloss texture for the wet patches in a rut. A small base with a bit of Muddy Ground churned up around the tracks does more for a finished model than most people expect.

The less exciting stuff you’ll still need

Primers, varnishes and putty don’t get anyone excited, but they decide whether everything else goes on properly.

• Fine Primer Spray, 400 ml, in white, grey or black.
• Ultra Matt Varnish, to kill the shine before weathering.
• White and grey modelling putty for seams.
• Odorless Thinner and White Spirit for the enamel effects.
• Paint Stripper, for the model that went wrong.

AK also sells palettes, including a Wet Palette and a ten-well aluminium one, round and flat synthetic brushes, a Basic Line airbrush, and two marker lines: Real Colors Markers, with sets for chipping and tactical markings, and Playmarkers aimed at tabletop gamers.

Where I’d start

If you’re new to this, I wouldn’t buy forty bottles. A handful of 3GEN colours for your subject, a primer, Dark Brown Wash, Streaking Grime and a matt varnish will cover a first tank or aircraft properly, and the pigments and rust products can wait until you know you enjoy the weathering side. AK’s themed paint sets are another easy way in, since each one is built around a subject like a camouflage scheme or a type of vehicle, and there’s a 10-piece Quick Starter Set too.

Art Spices offers free shipping from 75 USD, so it’s worth putting the boring things like thinner and varnish in the same order as the fun ones.