Collector notes
Boards, delays, cropped files, and a fire escape that appears twice
These notes name the sitting or cover, not a star score. One of them includes a wait that ran long. Two longer stories sit under the shorter remarks.
I asked for a quiet rooftop with Gwen’s palette, not a swing pose. Rhys’s first board put the water tower too close to her head; the second board left the sky alone. The fraction sits in a window so I do not feel as if a sticker was added later. Colour took a week longer than the note said, which I minded only because I had already cleared a wall.
I reserved number 04 of the subway-cover drop. Seeing the inked board before the public list meant I was not guessing from a crop. The reservation fee was dull paperwork, but it was applied to the cover as promised.
I brought a Miles cover bought from another seller. Mara found the mint hash in my email and showed me that the file I had been displaying was a cropped export without the edition bug. The sitting did not make the purchase nicer, but I now show the full file.
The studio is a room with boards on clips, not a gallery. I had pictured a finished Miles cover and left thinking about a pair instead. They would not let me photograph the unpublished subway piece, which I respected once I saw how unfinished the colour still was.
The day-and-night pair shares one fire escape. Night-side colour is colder than I asked for; I said so, and Nia warmed the brick without touching the sky. Both mint records name the other cover. That cross-reference is why I wanted a pair rather than two separate jobs.
Cover story: the dusk water-tower commission
Harriet wanted a Gwen palette and no swing line. The first pencil put the water tower against the head, which made the fraction — planned for the tank — compete with the face. Rhys redrew the tower to the left and left a strip of sky. Colour ran a week past the note because Nia reprinted the proof after the red in a distant sign started to clash with the ballet tones. Harriet hung the finished file as a print-out in a living room, edition bug still in the window. That was the point of designing the number into the street.
Cover story: a provenance sitting that found a crop
Priya arrived with a Miles cover bought elsewhere and a mint hash in an old email. The image on her phone was missing the edition bug along the right edge. Mara matched the hash to an uncropped file Priya still had in a downloads folder. The sitting did not unwind the purchase; it changed which file she displays. We now mention crops in every provenance letter, because a Spider-Verse digital cover without its fraction is harder to explain to the next person who asks.