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I'm totally new to this and this is my first post, so please be gentle :X

I decided to pick up painting miniatures as a hobby since I wanted something to do with my hands (I'm a programmer, so I need some time away from a screen). I've been reading a LOT and practicing a LOT with painting and I think I'm making some great progress.

I decided I want to start putting together a Chaos Warriors army for Age of Sigmar to play with my friends. Problem is, for the life of me, I have no clue how to handle these cloaks on the warriors regiment. I attached my latest attempt at painting.

I'm trying to do an off-white cloak but don't want to do a bone color because of the skulls on the backs of some of the warriors. For reference, I was going for "Alabaster Flesh" from the Citadel Paint App. This attempt was a base coat of Rakarth Flesh, a shade of Reikland Fleshshade, cleaning up again with Rakarth Flesh on some of the sloppy shading, then "layering" with Pallid Wych Flesh.

Obviously, this doesn't look right. Every time I apply a white-ish layer to a model (Ulthuan Grey as another example), it's streaky and translucent. Maybe this kind of color combination just won't work for a cloak, since there's so much surface area and the difference between light and dark is so drastic? Am I misinterpreting how to apply the Pallid Wych Flesh and it should be more of an Edge than Layer?

It's hard to imagine where the shading happens on a cloak vs. something with more jagged peaks and valleys. I must have stripped all 16 warriors twice while practicing.

Yes, I'm thinning my paints (possibly too much with the layer, which feels like a shade sometimes). Thanks for any tips! This is fun as hell.

For one the shade is still quite dArk, seraphim sepia might work better, also don't wash the cloak in shade just use a fine brush to fill in the shaded areas leaving the white alone.
Possibly even thin your shade.

Finally an alternative would be to start from a dark grey and work up to a white on the cloak by painting the cloak all dark grey then the next colour up covers most but not all the dark grey, then again with the next shade up and so on til your left with a fine white edge highlight.

A painting guide from fromthewarp blog shows how to do perfectly, its an older blog but great.
http://fromthewarp.blogspot.co.uk/2011/12/quick-look-at-how-to-do-layering.html

Thanks for the reply! Haven't read that blog post before, so I'll definitely check it out and take some tips.

My next attempt was going to just shade where other items meet the cloak and the holes in the cloak, then go from there. I was also going to try Agrax Earthshade since it feels like it's closer in the family of colors

I'll try mixing some of the base and layer together and building it up more gradually to see how it goes.

Painting whites/yellows/reds over darker colours is always a pain in the ass. Typically you have to go for a lot of thin coats over the top of each other to get a solid colour.

As to where the shading/highlights should be on a cloak I suggest a really simple solution if you basecoat your minis with spray cans. Get a black and a white, undercoat black as you normally would, then spray from above down with the white. This will give you a 'dusting' effect.

It gives you something like this (pic not mine, just the first one on Google):


Once you have that you'll see exactly where the shades need to go, and it'll be a nice light undercoat to put your Ulthuan Grey over too.

That's definitely something I'll try. I can really see how that spells out where the light hits. It'll be interesting to see how that will appear on the cloaks.

I'm also wondering why the Pallid Wych Flesh looks so textured in my example. The paint was thinned down a lot and it was probably 2-3 layers over Rakarth Flesh. Is it possible I didn't wait long enough between layers?

I'm trying the zenithal priming method on a couple of the warriors just to handle the cloak and... Wow. So cool to see the clear delineation between recessed areas and highlight areas.

I'm using a really thin Rakarth Flesh in the "gray" areas and combining it slowly with Pallid Wych Flesh into the "white areas" as per that blog post. I think it's going to turn out okay, which means I might be able to put these guys in the rearview mirror and move onto something harder!

But if anyone comes across this thread and has more tips, I'm a sponge.

It could be that you didn't let the layer dry before applying the next one. This hobby requires patience. You can always add another layer, but you can't really take one away.