Yeah, that's some cool bedtime reading.
I second JackEb's suggestion to check out the airbrush tutors free vids. Everything from how to hold an airbrush, exercises, and projects to try.
My advice is to make sure you have a paint that suits your needs (very important, please check with the forum to make sure uts suitable), get the appropriate reducer, and spend a lot of time methodically experimenting to get your paint/reduction/psi right.
There is no recipe for this unfortunately, as there are too many variables, brushes, nozzle size, paint type or brand and even weather and humidity can play a part. It can be frustrating, but, is well worth the time as once you have that down, learning strokes and blends etc, becomes so much easier.
A generalisation is that paint should be a skimmed milk consistency. But that is just a start. To avoid blocking the nozzle (IMO a dirty or blocked nozzle accounts for 90% +of newbie issues) over reduce rather than under reduce. You are aiming for continuous lines without skipping or spidering, and filled areas to be satin smooth without graininess or lots of overspray.
Rule of thumb is more reduction = less psi. Spidering = paint too thin/pressure to high. Grainy = paint too thick/pressure too low. Splats, double lines, paint not coming out right away, could indicate needing to clean the nozzle. The thinner the paint, the more layers you need to build colour, so find what will work best for you.
Tip dry (paint drying on the needle) is a natural process in airbrushing, with some colours worse than others. However, excessive amounts indicate that your paint ratio can be improved. More psi = more air to dry paint on the tip quicker.
It sounds daunting, but soon becomes second nature. Just be methodical, work with one drop of paint at a time, and make a note of how many drops of reducer used, and at what psi, and the effect of the paint sprayed, and just tweak slightly until your flow is right. This recipe becomes your base mixture, which can then be tweaked on the fly as needed for different conditions.
Once you have that aspect licked, the battle is half won.