Bright white highlight

I had been going back and forth inside my mind, if I should or should not use a tiny bit of bright white as a highlight for the shuttle. There were two concerns that I had: either the effect was way too strong and it'd ruin the whole off-white idea, or that it was completely unnoticeable. The thing going for it was that if it worked, it'd be a subtle but neat little thing.

In the end I decided to give it a shot, as ruining the whole model was pretty unlikely and if my concern #2 was going to be the way things went, I would've only wasted a bit of masking tape, time and a few drops of paint.

Protective masking

Only the recently painted cockpit interior needed any special protection, as everything else was already white on some level. I applied masking tape very strictly along the outer edges of the canopy edges and the empty space I was going to cover with a piece of kitchen paper. The point of the lump of paper was just to protect from the paint spraying from the zenith, the sides weren't an issue because I wasn't going to be pointing from those angles anyway.

Highlighting

First I blasted some pure white (VMA 71001 White) on the cockpit part and from there I proceeded to spray the wings and the spaceframe. I held on to the hull from the bottom so that I also kept the wings as tightly shut in the landing mode as I could. I did most of my airbrushing from a "straight above" angle, but for the wing tips I did some variation, just to help those a bit. The distance was always kept as what I'd call respectable, 'cause I didn't want a strong effect, just a gentle highlight.

In the photo below the bits were drying (that thin a layer was most likely already dry, but I wanted to be safe). If nothing else, it clearly wasn't an overstrong effect, so all was good so far.