T_127
The work as shown. Every value below comes from vae.db, the master database of the Crucible Year.
Recorded
- Date
- 2026.03.22, day 84
- Size
- 70 × 140 cm
- Paper
- S6, Qing Yi half-raw
- 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
- 5.3
- Form
- 2
- Tonal depth
- 2
- Layering
- 2
- Composition
- 2
- Material and surface
- 1.4
- Ink cover
- 75%
- Dark share
- 24%
- Tonal steps
- 4
- Flaws named by the reads
- water stain 4, mud 3, other 3, tide line 2, bloom 1
Older engine
- V7
- 8
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: 0.049 (under 0.045 reads as flat).
Five reads, agreeing on 4 of 5 qualities.
Each quality placed on its ladder by each read, and the mean the engine keeps. Where reads differ, they differ by one rung; close calls resolve down.
READ 1, IN ITS OWN WORDS
“A busy, layered sheet held together by a strong diagonal sweep. The slab forms are bulky, the dark masses are partly flat, and the bottom edge is crowded. A cloudy smudge at lower left lowers the material score. Overall an ordinary sheet, close to R2.”
The diagonal arc stroke follows the brush's travel. The central grey block and left slabs are bulky rectangles, and the bottom-right blot is a lumpy form.
WEAKEST Bulky grey slab block in the centre
STRONGEST Diagonal curved dark sweep crossing the centre
The central mass shows streaking, grain and stepped density, and the diagonal shows graded tone. The right blot and lower-left dark are flat. Modulation is 0.049, only just above the flat threshold.
WEAKEST Bottom-right black blot, flat inside
STRONGEST Central grey block with grain and dry-brush streaks
Pale translucent planes, a mid-grey block and a dark diagonal can each be read. Toward the base of the centre the overlaps thicken and the order becomes less clear.
WEAKEST Central overlaps darken toward murk at the base
STRONGEST Pale grey planes under the dark diagonal stroke
The diagonal gives the sheet a direction, and the top-right paper is shaped. Coverage is heavy at 75%. Masses jam against the bottom edge, and the left planes are static.
WEAKEST Crowded bottom edge with cut-off masses
STRONGEST Diagonal sweep driving from top-centre to lower right
A cloudy, muddy grey patch sits beside the lower-left dark mass, and the centre is murky. Fold creases and grime spots across the left planes show in the colour view.
WEAKEST Cloudy smudged wash at lower left
STRONGEST Dry-brush streaking within the central block
7 distinct places, 1 major.
Each read must name every flaw and where it is, in a ninth of the sheet. Here the reads named flaws in 7 distinct places, 13 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. A major flaw holds Material and surface at rung 1.
Measured from the 16-bit master.
The previous engine (V22) measured this sheet's master file: 1 principal ink mass traced (cyan), 6 enclosed voids at true size in their grid cells (amber), the main gesture from start to end (red). Of 16 edge segments, 56% crisp, 25% soft or bloomed, 19% 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.
1 major flaw: appliedThe rating cannot exceed 4.
lowest 1.4A read that breaks the reply format is discarded.
5 of 5 validV23 rating 5.3.
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.