Why did you buy an airbrush in the first place? Because, unlike cans, an airbrush allows you much greater control of your spray pattern, which nearly always translates into fades. Fades of different thick nesses take some practice but using the following will help step you through the process.

1. Start spraying by pushing down on the trigger of your airbrush and pull back to spray a heavy coat of paint.
2. Slowly move your brush back and forth covering the area.
3. To fade, begin to pull your hand up, increasing the distance between your brush and the surface you are painting.
4. As you gain practice, slowly learn to move your finger forward, lessening the amount of air flowing through the brush.

Whether you are fading a straight line or around a curve, the objective is the same, to have one paint color fade into another. Eventually, with enough practice, you will master this basic but essential technique.

The first airbrush body I painted for this article was what I call a simple Neon Rip. It's a simple, good looking, easy to execute body that will give you a chance to experiment fading with your airbrush. Another good reason for doing this as your first body is that with a rip, if you slip with the Xacto knife when cutting the masks, you just change the shape of your mask! It's nearly impossible to ruin it! It makes a cool street machine look as well. I prepped the body, and then put on 4 thick coats of Bob Dively's liquid mask inside the body. While it was drying, all I did was mark the body with jagged rips as you can see. Once the masking was dry, I cut the rip outlines with a Xacto knife and pulled off the main body masking since I was going to paint the main body black. I then lightly outlined the jagged edged with Parma Faspearl Black to highlight the edges and give it a stressed look. It is noticeable in the sunlight though it is not in the pictures. If I were to spray it again, I would have chosen to do the edges with silver for an even more pronounced stress effect. The next step was to spray the body and the wing in Faskolor black. I should note, always spray the wing at the same time as the body. I usually forget this step in my excitement then have to respray every thing (and clean everything again) because I set the wing aside and forgot about it.

Once the black is dry, pull up the rip masking one by one depending on the colors you will use. Spray the edges with your darker neon's. I used neon orange, green and violets on the edges. When your spraying edge fades like this, when you start spraying, actually start spraying on the black, off the edge of the masking and slowly move on to it until you have the depth of fade you want. For the body of the green and oranges sections, I sprayed the body of the rip with neon yellow. I sprayed the body of the violet section with neon raspberry. In-between spraying the different colors, I dried the coats with a hair dryer. I left the body over night to completely dry and in the morning I backed it with Pactra white to 1. Make the neon colors really pop and 2. Help seal the paint job from the elements. Trim the body and you have a great looking first airbrush body!

One of my favorite effects to do is the lightning effect and it's a fairly simple effect to practice your airbrush control with. Plus it's one of those designs it's hard to screw up on and it just plain looks cool! There are a few different ways of achieving the lightening strikes. I will cover two techniques, first the hard way and then the easy way.

1. Coat the entire body or the section of the body you want to have lightning strikes on with liquid mask.
2. In between coats of liquid masking, doodle lightning streaks on the outside of the body. Don't worry about creating straight lines since lightning isn't straight. Don't forget to add multiple forks in the lightning.
3. Once the liquid mask is completely dry, carefully cut out the thin strikes of lightning with a Xacto knife. Again, don't worry if the strikes are irregular since lightning is irregular!
4. Once you have the lightning streaks cut out in the body, it's time to break one of the supposed cardinal rules of painting by painting the white first! Spray the lighting with 3 or 4 coats making sure to get even coverage.
5. Once it's dried, spray it with a backing of Pactra Silver from a paint can. This will protect the background color from bleeding into it. Once that step is dry, peel off the rest of the liquid mask.
6. (If you have don't have an airbrush skip this step.) Again, using white or silver (or dark blue), you want to spray about a quarter inch fog down the solid lines of the lightning. This will give a nice haze effect that lightning has. DO NOT attempt to back the fog/haze with Pactra Silver, you will only screw up the body since it's impossible to do with any accuracy and it's unnecessary. FYI, instead of white, you can try spraying the fog with Purple to simulate the ionization in the air around lightning.
7. Move on to Completing the Night Sky.

1. Cut out the complete area that will have the lightning in it.
2. Simply draw the lightening on the body using an Opaque Paint Marker from a craft store. This is remarkably simple and gives great results! Again, don't worry if the lines are irregular since lightning is irregular!
3. Again, using white or silver (or dark blue), you want to spray about a quarter inch fog down the solid lines of the lightning. This will give a nice haze effect that lightning has. DO NOT attempt to back the fog/haze with Pactra Silver, you will only screw up the body since it's impossible to do with any accuracy and it's unnecessary. FYI, instead of white, you can try spraying the fog with Purple to simulate the ionization in the air around lightning.
4. Move on to Completing the Night Sky.

Now it's time to add the night sky. If you don't have an airbrush, simply spray the sky area with a few coats of black and you are done! If you have an airbrush, you can dress it up a bit more. I usually use a two-tone sky with black around the bottom of the body rising up occasionally into the open spaces. Only 1 coat if black is necessary. Then I paint the rest of the sky with a few coats of very dark metallic blue. I'll add a bit of the black (just of few drops) to Parma Fascent Blue. Experiment with other colors. As you can see from the sample photo, I used metallic purple with this body and it looks like an Ion Storm. Once it's dry, back it with Pactra Silver and you have a lightning effect body!

The molten body is really just an extension of the rip body, adding more colors and layers. Again, with this body, we're going to break the rules and spray the lighter colors first so I can show you how to break another rule. Mask the entire body with liquid mask. To paint the molten lava section of the body, first draw on the rip, and then trim away that section of the masking. The remaining masking is covering just the main body now. I use 3 colors to make up the lava, starting with red around the outside in about a 4 inch fade. Then I spray a 1 inch fade of orange ¼ inch around where I just sprayed red. I finish the inside of the red and orange with yellow. Once its dry, back the lava with Pactra White and let the whole body dry for at least 2 hours.

Once the body has dried, its time to spray the body of the car. First you need to peel off the remaining masking. We want to give the lava a 3D look and too do that; we need to add some shadow (depth) to the lava area. I spray a light ¼ inch fade of black around the lava to add a shadow. Less is more here, try to keep the fade small so it looks like the lava is just above or breaking out of the body of the car. Some painters really do wonderful 3D work on things like this lava, making it look like its bursting forth from the body and making the metal of the body look torn and melted. I personally have no interest in spending 10 hours on a body and there for don't put the effort into learning how to doing them. Charlie Barnes, BigDogRacing and Moskito on do this kind of work and you can learn a lot from studying their work.

On the McLaren you see in the picture, I've broken one of the rules of painting and I think the effect is very cool. You can't see it very well, but the car is semitransparent! That's right, you can see through it and I think it looks very cool on the car because the lava is solid and the main body looks semitransparent. You will need a can of spray paint to achieve this. I've tried using an airbrush and I personally can't get an even, thin coat on the car. I heated up a can of Pactra Chezoom Teal and got it very warm to the touch. Then I sprayed 2 very thin coats of it on the car. Once that was dry, I sprayed a very light coat of silver on the car to back it. I've since done another car and not backed it and I like it even more that way.

Flames are classic! Once you've painted some rips, flames will be no problem since the painting techniques are the same as the rips and molten looks. In fact, the hardest part of painting flames is actually drawing and cutting out good looking flames out of the masks. Luckily, several companies offer flame masks. In fact, XXX Main has over a dozen flames masks alone! To spray the flames, first we're going to remove all the body masking, leaving only the flame masking in place. I think flames look best behind either a fog of black or outlined with a contrasting color. For fogging, I spray a ¼ inch fade of black around the flame. Once that's done, I spray the main body of the car whatever color I want it to be and back it appropriately. Now let the body dry for at least a good hour before moving on to the flames.

Once the body is dry, I pull up the flame masking and begin to spray the flames. I like simple flames so I usually just do 2 or 3 color flames, starting with orange at the flame tips with a yellow flame body. Spray it just as you would the molten lava, keeping every thing smooth.

One twist I will occasionally do to flames is to outline the flames in a contrasting color. This takes some extra time and patience but can have a nice elegant look. Essentially, all you will do differently here is before you pull up the main body masking is to make a 1/8 to 1/4 inch trim cut all the way around the flames. This is harder if you don't have steady hands, which I don't. Pull up the outlining mask and spray it in whatever color you like. As you can see in the picture, I've used silver. Then spray the main body. When it is dry, pull up the flames mask and spray the flames. The classic colors for flames are a fade from the front of the car of white to yellow to orange to red. Simply spray the flames, following the outline of the mask with faded layers of red, then orange, then yellow and finally backing the whole thing with white.

Everybody loves the look of carbon fiber, after all, carbon fiber says "custom" and "racing!" Achieving the carbon fiber look on your cars is not difficult at all to paint, but it does require planning and preparation. To achieve this affect, you will need to pick up a rubber woven kitchen drawer liner. These are available in a number of patterns, so make sure you pick out the one with the smallest, tightest pattern. Usually, you can buy the liner in rolls so you will have plenty to do multiple bodies. While you can paint the carbon fiber affect in just about any color, the combination of Parma Faspearl Black and Faspearl Charcoal work very well together and provide the translucent depth that real carbon fiber has.

Since it is very difficult to get the liner to form to complex curves, it is best to do this technique on relatively flat areas of the body. If you do need it to stick around gentle curves, you can use masking tape to hold the corners in place or you can spray the liner with artist tack adhesive. Once you pull the liner up, you wont notice the adhesive.

1. Cut out the size of liner that you need, which excess of about ½ inch bigger on each side.
2. Lay the liner in the body where you want the carbon fiber effect. Tape it in place if necessary being careful to place the tape on gently.
3. Fill your paint cup with Faspearl Charcoal and spray an even coat across the mask while turning the body gently so as not to disturb the mask.
4. Set the body to the side and let that coat dry for 30 to 60 minutes.
5. Don't attempt a second coat since it isn't necessary and you will usually disturb the mask, ruining the pattern.
6. Lift the mask off the body and you will see a checkerboard pattern.
7. Fill your paint cup with the Faspearl Black and spray a top coat.
8. Use your hairdryer to speed up the drying.
9. Apply two more even coats with the Faspearl Black and consider it done!

I learned this one from looking at a few of Cosmo's bodies and seeing this really great finish. This one is very simple to do and can be achieved without an airbrush.

1. Simply mask off the body and cut out the section you want to look "Cosmic."
2. Take a paintbrush with short stiff bristles and your bottles of paint to an area you don't mind getting messy.
3. Stick the paintbrush into one of the colors of paint and wipe it off so the paint is wet but not dripping.
4. Take your finger and run it over the brush, flicking the bristles, flinging paint into the body and onto the exposed area.
5. Now do it again for all the colors.
6. When you have a nice multicolor spatter pattern, back that area with black or metallic black.
7. Now peel up the rest of the masking and spray the main body with your color of choice!

THIS could NOT BE EASIER! I learned this trick from reading an article by Mike Ogle in RC Car Action and tried it shortly after I saw the article. If you haven't tried this but want too, give it a go! I used a picture from a standard semi glossy magazine page and it worked very well. The glossy magazine images hold together better while your working with them. This technique has become so popular, XXX Main has released their Lexan Picture Glue, a glue specifically for this purpose. The glue itself comes in a 2 ounce tube with a nice wide top. Having a wide top makes it easy to slip a paint brush into it for application. While this may seem like a small thing, when you are used to squirting glue out of the bottle onto the picture, making access to the glue easy was a nice fore thought. The glue itself is white with the consistency of a milk shake. Depending on the size of the pictures you use, there is enough glue in the tub to do a quite a few bodies. Elmer's School Glue has been the popular glue for this application, but unfortunately, it is not flexible when dry. If you use this glue, the body is unraceable since one tap of the boards and your picture will come loose. XXX Main Lexan Picture Glue dries flexible and lets you race the bodies you use it on. When you whack the boards, the glue will flex with the body!

1. Pick the picture you want to use and trim it as closely as possible.
2. Take some fine grit sand paper such as 400 to 800 and lightly scuff the body giving the glue some area to bite into. Once you apply the glue and paint, you will never see the scuff marks.
3. Take a small paint brush and apply a liberal amount of glue to the entire surface of the picture and place it on your body.
4. If you want to mount it into partially onto a painted area, such as a person coming out of flames, paint the flames first and then glue the picture right over the painted area! The picture will stick as long as the paint is dry.
5. Once your picture is in place, use a credit card or piece of plastic and gently smooth out the picture. You want to squeegee the excess glue and any air bubbles out of the picture but go GENTLY, you don't want to risk ripping your picture. If there is a little excess glue between the body and the picture, don't fret, the glue dries crystal clear.
6. Finally, use a damp rag to wipe away any excess glue from around the picture.
7. Let the glue dry for 12 hours before finishing your paint job.
8. If you have an airbrush, lightly spray a fog around the picture. I used white to make it look like the soldier was rising out of the fog but generally a darker color will blend the edges better.

This is a neat finish you can achieve with spray cans but admittedly, it's one I learned by accident and sometimes I can reproduce it and other times I can't. I learned this by accident one night when I had 2 cans of identical paint. I had heated one and the other was left outside on a winter night and was half empty. I picked up the cold one and it spattered out of the can. When I looked at it, it was spattered but spattered evenly. After swearing up a storm thinking I had ruined a body, I brought it back inside and I backed it with silver anyway thinking I would just use it for an ugly race body. It turns out I got a very cool granite finish on it. Like I said, I've reproduced it. I've also attempted to reproduce it and ruined some bodies. You can also reproduce this more easily if you have an airbrush with a spatter nozzle. Just spatter the body heavily, but not completely covering the body. You can spatter it in multiple colors too. Then just back it as you normally would and bingo, graphite finish.