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So, I've recently purchased the last units of my T'au army and need to begin painting them. All are armed and ready for battle short of being painted. I'd been looking at doing a sort of olive-drabby base for them with little red stars where the sept logo would normally go, leathery brown on gloves and belts, and the usual blue for the exposed skin. As it stands now, I have a devilfish painted in forest camouflage and I'd like to put a star on the nose and the engines, but I'm not sure how well model paint will work with stencils. I don't trust myself to freehand the star, and I think stickers look silly, so I guess I'm not totally sure how to implement this. Can I use normal citadel model paints with stencils? Will that work? Also, for the little tiny stars on the fire warriors and fireblade, should I just cut a tiny stencil?

What about a stamp rather than a stencil for the tiny stars? A stencil should work fine. Alternatively get a cheap red spray can and cover the whole tank except for the star location.

Never tried this, but here's an idea:

Get some of those tiny foil star stickers. Paint an area/shoulder pad red, put a star sticker on it when dry. Paint the camo/armor color over the star, then peel it off?

There are plenty of places that do small red stars for 15mm vehicles, or 6mm aircraft as decals, may be worth a look.

also come with other Soviet style markings, numerals etc if you are interested

Draw the star on with a pencil (use a stencil if necessary), then paint inside the lines, and erase the pencil with a soft eraser - assuming you didn't just paint over them entirely.

Way better than trying to free hand it.

For extra class, paint gold trim around the star's edge.

Assuming 'sticker' refers to the things handed out to kids, the most straightforward solution would be to use waterslide decals such as these
https://us-store.warlordgames.com/collections/decals/products/bolt-action-soviet-stars-decal-sheet
or whatever Soviet tank/aircraft sheets appeal to you