How To Airbrush 5 Point Star

In our basic lessons, we have learned how to airbrush a simple star. Now, we are going to airbrush a complex 5 point star using home made star stencil and using all the same basic airbrush techniques you have been practicing. Written by Don Johnson.

5 Point Star Template

So you now know how to airbrush those stars you’ve seen on t-shirts designs using dagger strokes, but now we’ll move onto to another technique you can use to airbrush a star. For this one you’ll need  5 star pattern, drawing which you can print off on your computer. You can draw one in an image program like Photoshop or you can download the following design.

Airbrush Supplies Required:

What you’ll need to follow along with this how to article:

• Double action airbrush,
• airbrush ready paints (Com-art, Golden Airbrush Colors, Dr Ph Martins),
• hobby knife.

Air pressure you use will depend on the type of airbrush and brand paint you are using but generally speaking any where from 20 to 60 PSI. For the paints I mentioned above 20 PSI or slightly lower should work fine with a gravity feed airbrush.

How To Airbrush 5 Point Star

Above are the stars I printed, the rule is there so you can get a sense of how big my stars are. You’ll need to print off at least two of the same star, the reason will become clear further on in this tutorial.

Now that you have your stars printed, go ahead and cut one of the stars out using a hobby knife. Printer paper works fine to practice this but you might want to use a heavy card board like poster board or even a t-shirt stencil material for this if this is a design you will be doing a lot.

On the backside of your star, place some rolled masking tape to hold the star in place on your painting surface.

With your star in place on your painting surface secured, spray around the star with red followed by yellow just out past the red. Let the over spray from the yellow flow into the red. If you point your airbrush into the star template it will lift the template and we’ll get over spray under your template, not a good thing. Keep your airbrush square to the template or directed out away from the template.

Pull the star template off and your star design should look like mine pictured above. As you can see no over spray got under my template so I have a nice sharp outline of the star. Had over spray gotten under,the star would have a fuzzy outline, not good.

Now go back to the second star you printed off, with a pencil and straight edge, divide it off as pictured above. With the hobby knife, cut one of the sections out as pictured above.

Finish cutting sections out of your star so it ends up pictured like the one above. With your star now completely cut out as above carefully place it over the star outline you just airbrushed. Make sure it lines up exactly with the outline on your painting surface for best results.

For my third color I chose blue, you can use whatever color you like for this part of the technique. Airbrush along the inside edge of the sections you cut out of the star template. Be careful to keep your airbrush square to the template to avoid over spray getting under the template.

Pull your star template off and add just a little color in the sections that that template covered. In my case I airbrushed a very thin layer of blue in those sections. Your star should now look like the one pictured above or even better.

To sharpen the edges up a bit, I use a business card as a free hand shield and some white. Place the card along the top edge of a star section and add just a touch of white letting the over spray drift down into the star. Go over each high point using this technique before moving onto the next step.

Pictured above I have gone back in and with the blue, airbrushed a thin layer of color over the white we added in the step outlined above. I have added some stars around the outside of the star as pictured above.

And there you have it another technique to airbrush a star, which can be used on many different surfaces.