Thick lights, thin shadows: deliberate choice or habit?

Yesterday I scraped a shadow passage back to almost a stain and loaded the sunlit ridge next to it with a fat stroke, and the whole thing just clicked. I didn't plan it that way. It happened because I was running out of time and the light was already shifting.

But it got me thinking. When I'm out painting, thicker paint in the lights and thinner paint in the shadows seems to show up in my panels over and over. I'm not sure how much of that is a conscious decision versus just responding to what the light is doing in the moment. Bright areas feel like they want more pigment, more body. Shadows want to recede, so I leave them lean.

Do you think about paint thickness as a deliberate tool for building form, or does it just happen as a byproduct of how you mix and apply? I'd love to hear how other people handle this, especially if you've tried to be more intentional about it and noticed a difference.