gregbale
A 'kissin' cousin,' as it were, to trompe l'oeil. Now that, I understand.
Appreciate the update. Learn something new (almost) every day. 
Cheers
- Essentially, and thanks for the reminder of that term too. Which I suppose all modeling falls into - at least in terms of intentionally exagerating contrast.
I could be wrong, but it seems to me that a lot of hobbiests tend to gravitate to a particular genre or discipline and then evolve into specializing within it. Which might explain why I, as someone who has fairly equal interest in canvas painting, modeling (planes, cars, GK figures, minis, mecha), sculpture, full (1:1) scale building, etc. has noticed that terms often don't escape the orbit around their origin discipline.
So on that note I'll bring up NMM and TMM. Non Metallic Metal evolved from studying techniques used in old-school oil paintings of armor (as in knights, not tanks), jewelery, etc. which of course did not use any metallic pigments but achieved a metal appearance. Essentially it is a carefully contrived arrangment of contrast and placement or contrast, with certain tonal shifts through the value range depending on the metal represented. True Metallic Metal is what we do as (non-mini) modelers, using metalic pigment paints but then exagerating the contrast through washes and highlighting.
Both NMM and TMM have their best uses, and it seems this is primarily based on scale. With TMM being much easier to get decent results with and being more suitable for medium to large applications, and NMM being quite difficult to master (I'm still very novice!) and more suitable for smaller surfaces.
TMM looks good from every angle, but you can't control the location of highlights. NMM looks best from one viewing angle (but can look convincing from all) and allows you to guide the eye by placing fixed highlights that don't have competition from specular highlights of metallic paints.
There. You probably already knew all that, but just in case.
Next we could discuss the "kissin' cousins" that are pre-shading and zenithal priming.
missileman2000
Good dry brushing. You've got the technique. I am a big fan of dry brushing instead of filters and such. How was it learning the technique? Easy or hard.
-Thanks very much. It was not my first time drybrushing, but it was my first time drybrushing after watching a really great youtube tutorial on the subject that showed me that everything I thought about drybrushing was WRONG.
Primarily this was that drybrushing does NOT use a dry brush. The brush needs to be damp, and only barely damp. And the paint needs to be unloaded, on a board or something (not a towel! it removes water from the brush), so that the brush is basically just tinted with slightly moist paint. Then it applies much more consistently, and softly, so that you can build up (like an airbrush) thin layers. Otherwise it would be very hard to successfully drybrush a large flat panel, like the back of Leia, without it looking blotchy. It almost should be called dry-filtering. Oh, and use makeup brushes. And the biggest one you can use in any given application.
And, like an airbrush, you can reach opacity fairly quickly with multiple passes because the thin applications dry quickly. However a drybrushed surface will not look quite as smooth as an airbrushed surface, especially if both exist within the same viewable area. Which might be beneficial, as the texture difference could be useful contrast - say between heat staining on exhaust piping vs. gradations on rust on a different part of the same exhaust.