Help with post shading

You seem to know better what you want than what I can invision from here.  It might be best for me to be quiet. Hopefully someone will come along who is more in tune to what your goal is.

You might try that salt weathering technique. It will break up the monochrome look.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFVRH27DSEk

My preshading darkened panel lines just fine. I'm trying to to break up the monochrome look a bit with a slightly lighter tone. However, with many tiny panel lines in a small 1/72 fighter, I don't want to spray blothes of light paint in each panel. I'm trying to keep the effect subtle.  I think there's a tendency for people to go way overboard with fading and weathering. If it's a small scale, much of that detail would be lost.

If you're trying to accentuate panel lines, that's a bit different than either highlighting or post shading ( these are all different steps).

Here is an article on just panel lines: https://www.scalespot.com/reference/panellines/panellines.htm

Tamiya acrylic

What paint are you using ?