Randle...
Here is a couple of his canopies? However these look really nice put quite EZ compared to some of those beautiful artistal' Can-of-pee's' that you have become so famous for creating?

Pretty simple...as you must jest?
Make a small knife  star burst choice cut onto low tack tape.

Position it carefully on the high point of the canopy curve.

Make a very very short small circular close to the masking burst of white---
 with low volume of paint but a greater volume of air (since the airbrush is very very very close to the mask itself.)
 Extremely important in order to let each pointed finger of each star burst leg fade away into the main canopy background color.
99% of the time...most painters use WAAAAY TO MUCH PAINT VOLUME, instead of the all important larger volume of air...in order to allow  the airbrush to  build slowly the paint onto the surface itself.
Then the hardest part is  always AFTER U' PULL AWAY the masking!!!

At least for this blind ol' loonie tooner....it takes a really ACCURATE aiming job  and carefully adjusted airbrush with lots of PRACTICE BURSTS onto a  practice test strip to help determine   the thickness of the paint and the volume of air needed...before you begin to ZERO in onto the very center of the starbust onto the model itself....allowing just the right amount of time for that halo effect at the center to cover over the center of the star bust.
too much info...
bottom line: PRACTICE, PRACTICE, and PRACTICE...makes perfect? (Uhhh? Sometimes?  

Randy,
while not an expert ,, some experimentation has been done in my "studio" lol,
One method , essentially a modification of Shultzie's description, that I have used. I gathered a stack of exposed xray film from a lab one time. its thin, rigid and easily cut. I cut the star shape I wanted into the film, then holding it just over the surface of the model, spray lightly, more air than paint but low pressure. Then you can make one more intense blast at the center of the mask film making the burst in the center. still takes a steady hand, and some practice, but I liked it better than a mask that was stuck flush on the surface.

as for shading canopies, I have started with a black base, then using pearl in clear, done my shading.
for the main body, I spray with a blue and red pearl mix, mostly blue as i recall. Then I add some green pearl to the mix, spraying lightly around the perimiter, this "greys" the color of the pearl slightly making a better shadow effect. Now one revision on this, you can use colors that "match" your color scheme instead of the blue ~ red combo. just remember that to make brown, or to make a color dirtier, a small amount of the remaining color will dirty it up. I have also added a drop of violet, or grey toner to the shading mix to get a bit more pronounced variation in the shadows..
I normally shade around the back edge, and the bottom edge of the canopy area.     A sharper shadow  on the back edge than the bottom edge seems to be more aesthetically correct to me for some reason, the sides get a nice gentle blending of shadow,,,

Randy,

Hit youtube and enter airbrush techniques in the search.  You'll definitely find what you're looking for.  You may even have to watch it be painted on some girl....  Oh well the hazards of our hobbie....

B

"Not to kidnappity' this post of your Randy...
Painting canopies on wind tunnel models over the years was always a "pain in the exterior" but usually I made a habit of starting with a base under coat of silver...followed my my trusty gaggle of Iwata HP-C air brushes. (I managed to escape after serving my 30 year incarseration behind the barbed wire fence with only 3 of my best Iwatas.
After many many hours and months of wind tunnel testing...this 7ft. Steel force model was turned over to me to do a final paint project. Thankfully the model was carefully prep'd and primed by my fellow felons.
Last year this model was still on display in the entrance of the Wind tunnel...but after all these years of sitting there in that sun filled lobby the clear top coats had yellowed and showed many paint cracks.
Kinda sad to see this ol' historic metal force model decay so badly. Hopefully my old modelmaker bud... Bruce Kimble will get a chance to "strip and repaint" that old work horse before they send it off to the metal scrap heap.

To think you guys got paid to do that.    Still a gorgeous looking bird.

Some of the major DOWN SIDES to getting paid for building models on command.. was NEVER having enough liberty in chosing paint schemes, or having enough time or budget to really do a first class art project.
That old saying "ONE CAN'T RUSH CREATIVITY" certainly didn't seem to carry much merit or truth for Boeing Wind Tunnel model makers or the under budgeted aerodynmaic model design engineering staff.
 If it wasn't for Ralph Johnson (perhaps one of the greatest and most highly gifted Boeing professional display model makers help me deal with those "create on demand demons....I wouldn't still be alive today to rant n' ramble about it?