I don't use Tamiya, but I do use Testors enamels.  The one big tip I could give is that cloth usually has color with low saturation, while most hobby paints, especially primary colors, tend to be highly saturated.  I mix mine with an equivalent shade of gray to reduce saturation.

Tamiya paints are acrylics, not enamels.

Vallejo acrylics are great for hand brushing plus they have a wider variety of colors for figure painting. There are other brands of enamels besides Testors Model Master you can choose from - Humbrol and Mr. Color.

BlackSheepTwoOneFour

Tamiya paints are acrylics, not enamels.

Tamiya does make enamels. They're not generally available in the US, but are in other countries.

Tamiya do indeed produce enamel paints.  I recently ordered some XF-2 flat white, and is clearly labeled on the bottle as being enamel.

Tamiya acrylics aren't true acrylics, though they can be thinned with water.  There is something more potent in them that makes their paint more resilient,  most western merchants refuse to ship by air, and will not mix with other acrylics out there (or at at least the ones I have tried: Vallejo, Andrea, and LifeColor).  Conversely, try using Tamiya acrylic thinner on these acrylic paints, you end up with a gooey mess.

Back to painting the figure, I think you should be ok if laying down solid colours, as I don't know how the technique goes if blending shades right on the figure.  Once done, give it a flat spray, that too should help tone down the intensity of colours.

regards,

Jack

Yeah, Tamiya isn't really the best stuff for brush painting. Sometimes on putting down a second coat it seems like it softens the first coat and ends up with a rough finish. 

Model Master acrylic works much better for me. But I'll agree with Blacksheep, Vallejo is the best paint I've ever brushed. It's so pigment rich you can thin it a bit and still get great coverage. 

I bought tamiya paints for my first tamiya kit. I don't have an airbrush right now, so I'm all brushes. Wasn't really a fan of their acrylics. I'm more of a testors man anyway...really enjoying my first kit with model masters this far. 

Tamiya enamels are the square bottle, whilst their acrylic version is the round bottle.

I've used their enamels for brush painting, not figures, but more for their metallic colours. I quite like painting with them, though you will need to thin them with a little thinner still. They tend to be thicker than other enamels i've used, like Humbrol.