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I was thinking to paint my high elfs i was going to either prime them white or gray and then do the metal in mithril silver have all cloth in white and elf flesh for skin and i would probably wash the cloth so it looks a little wethered. Does anyone have any thoughts on this idea.

CONTRAST!
Before you put paint to model, either do a test model or a sketch with the colours you want. By the sounds of it, everything is rather bright.
Boltgun, with a drybrush of chainmail and then a couple of further shades and highlights, will suffice for the metal. For the skin I would look at Tallarn Flesh, shades with thinned down Dark Flesh (more natural shading than Devlan Mud), and highlight up to Elf Flesh. White cloth I would start with Astronomican Grey, shade with Astro + Codex/Chaos Black, then highlight up to Skull White.
You'll need a dark(ish) base, so no snow!
I'd do any gems red, to contrast with the blue in the white cloth.

Cheers

Plain mithril will look terrible on scale armour, either start with a darker metal and drybrush your mithril on, or wash your mithril and rehighlight it.

White cloth is common and popular with HE and generally suits the minis' aesthetics - you'll need a secondary colour for sashes, ribbons, armour trim, and the like.

Elf flesh is, obviously, a good choice for painting elf skin, but it also needs a wash (ogryn flesh probably) or it'll look way too flat.

I prime my high elves with white, although a light grey would work as well.
For the armour, I've gone the route of mithril silver, washed and then highlighted with the same colour. Way back in the day, I used citadels armour wash when it still existed. Now I'd probably do a watered-down badab black.
Skin I've always painted with Dwarf flesh, washed it with flesh wash, then dwarf flesh and elf flesh for highlights.

Heres some pics of some Sword Masters I painted, I like the idea of just having a plain colour scheme then using bright colours as a highlight, for example, in this pic I have used blue on the cloth and red on the gems while the armour hair and skin are all similar.

Just personal preference, hope this helps.

Also the silver is pretty much just mithril with a black wash.

Model was primed in black.





Obviously the bases arent done but I would agree with doing a dark base if your using light colours.