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So I started painting some weeks ago and since then made some, to me at least, considerable progress. I'm slowly learning to do some OSL lighting effects and I'm getting there. Doing that on Dark Angel green PA is my most practised one, and I can at least tell I'm getting better. Transfers well to blue as I found with my Librarian, but one thing still baffles, no, really really eludes me:
Tabards and cloaks.
I just can't seem to get the knack on painting these. I did the cloak on the Company Master of the DV set with a purplish colour; went reasonably well. The ttransitions weren't as smooth as I liked (pic of him in my gallery)... But the bone colours of the "regular" sergeants and veterans? Nope.
Now, what I so far usually do basecoast with Zandri dust, Shade with Seraphim Sepia and then try and go over anything besides the deep recesses with Ushabti Bone.
After this, some edge highlights with Screaming Skull. Sounds reasonable, right?
What really puts me of the game is the difference between a shaded Zandri Dust and Ushabti Bone. It'a just so jarring! Ushabti is SO much brighter, I can't find a colortransition there, especially since it's hard to keep the recess and paint "out" of the fold in the cloth. Simply leaving the recesses is obviously not the way to go... As is, currently airbrushing.
So how do other fellow Dakkaists do this?

I've had luck with cloth/fabric and parchment by painting ushtabi bone and just washing it with devlan mud or agrax earthshade. Quick and easy!

I'm working on the sergeant for the DV set and I'm in the same situation.

I've only based, layered and washed at this point. The wash dried terribly with obvious pool lines and the shade contrast leaves much to be desired. I may hit with another thin wash. In the end I want to bring it up to a nice, crisp white.

I found a blog post on Tale of Painters (there is a javascript bug on the page, fyi) that listed a very interesting way of doing the tabards that I wanted to try out.

If your problem is that your want to transition from one color to another but the two colors seem to be two far apart, why not create a transitional color by mixing the two colors together in equal parts?

This video shows my own sergeant in progress. He starts at about the 2 minute mark.