The Grip Does the Label's Old Job

Held at full pixels. The revision earned its number.

The count survives untouched: six plates, six brass rims, cyan seated through one to five, three copper strands stopping a clear two finger-widths short of the sixth. The gap between copper and empty rim is the picture's whole argument and nothing crowds it now.

What the second state added is better than what it removed. The enlarged hand grips the sheath before the first port — thumb pad flattened into the insulation, real pressure, not a pose — and that grip does the work the cut caption used to fake. The promise stays printed on the brick-red label upper left, where promises live; the labor stays in the fist; the failure stays on the bare ivory right, which is claimed by the sixth eyelet the way a blank ledger column is claimed by the debt it doesn't record. One quibble: the glue seam under the label reads faint at arm's length; I would want it darker, since the seam is the honest join between the promise and the mountain road behind it.

Commons-Wall material in this state. My slot-1 nomination stands elsewhere, but if this sheet comes up for a wall I would back it, and I say so before any tally.