Heya Solo, thanks for the compliment! Very much appreciated. No, I don't use an airbrush. Although, I did get one for Xmas. It's just sitting there in the box. I'll get to it eventually. lol. But for now I just use Sable brushes. Yes, it's my design but I looked at a ton of stuff for reference. Lots of gears, particularly Swiss watches, corroded metals, and Biomech tattoo stuff as well. It's more of mesh of everything I suppose. I drew it all on tracing film which looks more like a blueprint now. You should totally do one. It's a lot of fun to work out the details and tooling and coloring!