Airbrush practice

I've always been a fan of different kinds of art I guess but I know I've wanted an airbrush since I the first time I saw one. Since I found out about youtube I've been looking for airbrushing videos and actually started learning before I actually owned an airbrush.
But finally in the summer of 2008 my dad bought me an airbrush and a compressor!! So anyways I tried out a few things at first to get the feel of it and then started on my first real freehand project:

I made a blown up copy of a Yu-Gi-Oh card monster art thingy my brother collects. It's a purple red eyed dragon (I think). So the first thing I did was mask the dragon part to create an outline.


This is what it looked like after the white and the blue. The dragon emanated a blueish glow, so here's where the white and blue is for.


Once the mask is taken off the edges look nice and crisp, and luckily there's no bleed :D


After the unmasking there's filling in to do, and because of the many different shapes and the fact that masking is a very timeconsuming thing (well it is for me..) So I started filling in the shapes of the scales freehand.


After layers and layers and layers of airbrushing, this is what it looks like :) I'm very happy with it because it's actually my first (semi-)freehand work and it actually turned out good!


And here's a picture of the proud owner: my brother Shiwi:


I'm hoping to do a lot more of these :D