I'm still very much a newbie but I'm already impressed with some of the textures that can be achieved with an airbrush. I would love to know how some of these are done. I saw an advert for a texture course that Dru Blair does which had a wee painting of denim as an example. It's mind-blowing!
There are quite a few SBS's in the SBS section of the forum with just about everything you could ever want to do from creating simple skin textures to elaborate textile and carbon fibre effects, you be able to find what tools and texture aids can be used to create these textures and effects, as you've learned fairly quickly with your amazing cat, you don't just rely on your airbrush and paint, in fact some it relies on taking paint away or stopping it getting there in the first place
you will be amazed what items you have around the home that are normally used for simple domestic tasks mostly around the kitchen, so choose your approach times to that area wisely, a clothes iron to the forehead can speedily kill the creative mood
I'm sure you have already dabbled a bit in the SBS section but you seem to have a natural skill so it's worth your while to delve fairly deep in there, but as you go through the incredible amount of information, I would advise a protective helmet since a lot of what you see there may cause you to slap your own forehead painfully hard
we try to do our best for you but we can't accept responsibility for headaches or damage cause by the head slapping or indeed the clothes iron to the forehead scenario.
To help you further, there are a range of different texture stencils available which will usually describe with examples what they are best suited for, and as far I know both Dru and Marissa Oosterlee (foxy studios) both have texture kits available which are very very reasonably priced.
Feel free to start threads with specific questions, I mean, we would get a little "all over the place" trying to explain every single type of texture in this one thread, so just do one step at a time with a question for each one you might want to know about, it's doubtful you would use all of them on one painting, so if you begin a project, stick to the ones you may need for that project, but as I said, you will find a lot of them ate already here