AK Interactive Mud Pigment Review — More like dirt than mud

As the second part of this series, where I review some fun enamel paints sent over by AK Interactive, I want to dive into the world of dry pigment, and what it is and what it isn’t.

Pigment is a chemical compound that gives something color. Pigment plus emulsion, water, and additives = acrylic paint (psa: don’t lick your brush, I don’t care what influencers do). Pigments are also some of the first colorants, with evidence of their creation and use stretching back 350,000 years, so in some ways, painting up Darth Vader is similar to an early human making finger art in a cave in France.

When paint dries, you’re left with that mixture of emulsion, pigment, and other things. This is why some paint ends up matte, glossy, or satin (think of it as an in between). It’s why Dirty Down Rust will dry into that perfect rusty color, despite coming out of the bottle in a darker, wetter tone.So in our last review, I briefly discussed how enamels have great working times, and when they dry, they can be very matte, which can be super advantageous for creating dirt, dust, or tints for other products, which brings me to AK Interactive’s Mud Set, which are great, but when used with other products, unlock something greater.

The set comes with 3 bottles of Liquid Pigment: Dark Earth, Dry Mud, and Dark Mud. These 3 colors do a good job of simulating varieties of tones you’d find on the ground. The product itself is pretty great. It’s suspended in a liquid that can be thinned down with white spirit or thinner, it’s self-fixing (which means when it dries, it stays put, and it dries very matte. What this doesn’t do is build up heavy texture, which is what I initially was hoping for when I opened the bottle. But as Bob Ross said, “happy accident”.

Instead, I think these products do a good job of accentuating your existing effects. Take this base I had painted up last year, I used browns, cork, and light sand to try to simulate the ground, but by adding in layers of the liquid pigments, I’ve been able to better create a dusty strata of tones, with Dark Earth being the bottom and working my way up to Dry Mud being the upper-most layer.

On this other piece, I layered in some other material, which helped create some chunks of dirt, then layering in Dark Mud and just the thinnest Dry Mud, I’m able to get that realistic dirty effect. On the back of the piece, you can see how the pigment gathers and feels like built-up dirt, but when you look to the side, you’ll see no volume, because this is just pigment. 

I really like the fact that it self-fixes. When I started getting more serious about my basing and effects, I took soft pastels, ground them up into powder, and then applied them meticulously with a brush, then used a fixer (a thin glue) to hold everything in place. I also tried not to breathe or sneeze. This eliminates all of those steps.

On the negative side, you are using enamels, so don’t try to breathe it in, lick your brush, etc. Which isn’t really a negative, but you know, don’t taste these paints.

Give them a shot. AK offers more than just this range; there are 11 other colors you can go after. Personally, I’m going to pick up the concrete.