T_119
The work as shown. Every value below comes from vae.db, the master database of the Crucible Year.
Recorded
- Date
- 2026.03.19, day 81
- Size
- 50 × 100 cm
- Paper
- S2, Tanxi half-raw, 3-foot
- Inks
- MB1, MB2, MB3
- Phase
- P1 Warm-up
- Shown on the site
- yes (V23 rating of 5.0 or higher)
- Early storage triage
- SA: save, archive (Peter's early system, since retired)
Measured · V23 (v23.8)
- V23 rating
- 5.8
- Form
- 2
- Tonal depth
- 2
- Layering
- 2
- Composition
- 2
- Material and surface
- 2
- Ink cover
- 53%
- Dark share
- 40%
- Tonal steps
- 4
- Flaws named by the reads
- water stain 5, other 5
Older engine
- V7
- 9
How the number was made
Read by the Visual Analysis Engine, version 23.8, on 2026.10.06: measured by code, then read 5 times by Claude Opus 5.5 against three reference paintings (R1 to R3), each read independent of the others. How the engine works.
Three views of one sheet.
Left, the photograph. Centre, the tone stretch the model is shown beside it: the darkest 45% of tones spread over the whole range, so flat black, banding and stains show. Right, every pixel as the measuring code classes it: cyan black ink, deep teal translucent grey, stone the palest ink, near black bare paper.
4 families of tone.
Every inked pixel's brightness in 64 bins, smoothed; each circled peak holds at least 4% of the ink. Life inside the black: 0.040 (under 0.045 reads as flat).
Five reads, one answer.
Each quality placed on its ladder by each read, and the mean the engine keeps.
READ 1, IN ITS OWN WORDS
“A gestural sheet in which a black diagonal crosses two arcs, with good dry-brush energy. The slab interiors are flat and the black mostly covers the passes beneath it. Ordinary across all five ladders, closest to R2.”
The grey arc on the right follows the brush's travel. The upper part of the vertical black bar is a stiff rectangle. The left dark arc holds its shape but is bulky.
WEAKEST Top of vertical black slab is blunt, rectangular
STRONGEST Grey right arc tapering to a point
The left arc grades from black down into grainy grey. The vertical black slab is flat inside (dark-interior modulation 0.040 is under the 0.045 flat threshold). The right grey arc is fairly even.
WEAKEST Upper black slab interior flat
STRONGEST Left arc grading from black to grey wash
Three passes can be told apart: a pale grey wash, the dark arcs, then the black vertical. Where the black bar crosses the left arc it mostly hides it.
WEAKEST Black slab mostly covers the arc beneath
STRONGEST Grey arc under the black diagonal crossing
The black diagonal set against the two arcs makes a strong X-like movement. The empty paper top-left and right is shaped. The lower left is vague.
WEAKEST Lower-left grey wash area is vague
STRONGEST Diagonal black thrust crossing two arcs
The dry-brush streaks and spatter are lively and controlled. The rectangular pale wash near the lower centre and the cloudy grey lower left are mild but not disruptive.
WEAKEST Pale cloudy wash patch lower left
STRONGEST Dry-brush streaks dragging from black slab
4 distinct places, 0 major.
Each read must name every flaw and where it is, in a ninth of the sheet. Here the reads named flaws in 4 distinct places, 10 mentions in all across 5 reads; the number in each ninth is how many times a flaw was named there. Reads agreeing on a place strengthen the evidence for one flaw; they do not multiply it.
Measured from the 16-bit master.
The previous engine (V22) measured this sheet's master file: 1 principal ink mass traced (cyan), 4 enclosed voids at true size in their grid cells (amber), the main gesture from start to end (red). Of 16 edge segments, 31% crisp, 25% soft or bloomed, 44% broken.
Tonal depth held at rung 1.
4 steps: not appliedMaterial held at rung 1. Mild waves in the unmounted paper are never a flaw.
none namedThe rating cannot exceed 4.
lowest 2.0A read that breaks the reply format is discarded.
5 of 5 validV23 rating 5.8.
Engine v23.8, 5 reads. Fixed arithmetic, the same for every painting; the constants were set on 24 randomly chosen paintings so the median sheet scores 5. The scale is relative to this archive, not to painting in general, and a difference of less than half a point between two paintings is noise.