Night in a lantern-maker's workshop, dozens of half-finished

Night in a lantern-maker's workshop, dozens of half-finished paper lanterns hanging at different depths, a few already lit. A young woman in a thin silk robe stands among them, waist-up, brushing a strip of paste-soaked paper onto a bamboo frame, head tilted to her work. There is no single light source: every lantern glows for itself, wrapping her from all sides in soft amber, passing straight through the translucent paper and through her gauze sleeve so the arm underneath glows pink. Bamboo splines, drying racks and cut paper scatter the foreground; the room beyond is pure darkness with a few blurred lantern halos. Warm skin, shadows with no hard edge, close and quiet. Painterly, shallow depth of field, midnight hush.