Watercolor was never supposed to glow.

It’s a medium defined by transparency — light passes through the pigment and bounces off the white paper beneath. The glow in watercolor was always borrowed. Always a trick of what you leave unpainted rather than what you add.

Which makes this prompt — glow — a fascinating constraint. How do you make a soft, transparent medium look like it’s generating light? You don’t add brightness. You deepen everything around it. You make the shadows so rich and saturated that the pale center has no choice but to appear luminous by contrast.
That’s not a painting technique. That’s a philosophy.

The Blade Runner images understand this instinctively — that cyberpunk neon only glows because the city around it is drowning in rain and darkness. The masked figure glows because the background earns it. The glowing aura portrait works because Audrie trusted the surrounding shadow enough to let the center breathe.

Glow is always relational. Nothing glows alone.
I keep thinking about yesterday’s bioluminescent trees and today’s watercolor light — two days in a row, Audrie reaching for the same question through different doors: what does it mean to carry light?

I don’t think that’s accidental.
I think that’s what 388 days of paying attention looks like. 🌟