Painting flowing fabric

Flowing fabric refers to things such as; cloaks, capes, dresses and flags, to name just a few. I've been trying to both get faster and better when painting those parts of miniatures.

There are a number of common techniques that I come across regularly including, layering, stippling, wet blending and glazing.

Having tried some of those, I have tended towards glazing.

To be clear, I am not an expert at painting cloaks etc., I still need a lot more practice, but this is what I have achieved so far and the process I have used.

1. Prime the miniature

I normally use black, but for this technique, some brighter colours may be easier to apply over a white or grey primer.

2. Take a photo of the model before I start.

Use a single light source from the front and off to the side of the area I intend to paint. This becomes the reference to see which areas are in shadow and which are in the light.

3. Cover in the base colour.

This is the colour that I want the end result to look like. In most cases cloaks do not have any fine detail to obscure, so the paint can be applied in a relatively thick coat.

4. Select the paints.

I tend to use three colours and black. A dark, base and highlight colour.

5. Paint in the deepest shadows.

Typically I mix a little black in with the darker shade colour. This is watered down to a normal layer consistency. I paint this at the bottom of the deepest folds.

6. Paint the edge shadows.

This is commonly a thinned down darker shade colour mixed with the base colour. It is painted on the shadow side of each fold. The reference photo can be useful for this stage.

7. Start the highlights.

This uses a mix of the highlight colour with the base colour. Paint over the crown of all the folds.

8. Let that paint dry.

It needs to be dry enough that the next stage will not take all the paint off but it can sometimes help if the paint is not fully dry.

9. Glazing

This is not one step but the same process applied with different shades of the colour.

The glaze is a very wet, translucent, mix of paint. Before applying, soak up some of the water from the brush on a cloth or paper towel. I find getting the consistency right is a little difficult, but the aim is that the colour applies thinly but does not flow down and pool in the recesses.

In my case there will be four boundaries, the colours to glaze are as follows:

• Deepest black to side shadow - glaze with the side shadow colour, pushing the paint towards the deepest shadow.
• Shadow to semi-highlight - glaze in the base colour pushing the paint towards the shadow.
• Semi-highlight to lit side - glaze in the base colour pulling the paint towards the highlight.
• Lit side to deepest shadow - This is not necessary for sharp creases. It's for more sweeping folds. Glaze in the base colour mixed with the darker shade. Pushing towards the deep shadow.

It takes me a few attempts to get a smooth gradient. Sometimes I do better than others. This is where I need to practice.

Lastly. Depending on the colour, I'll add a highlight to the very top of the folds and glaze this to blend it towards the base colour.

Some of my efforts are better than others, but I think I'm improving.

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