--- title: "T_164, full record | Crucible Year" url: https://peteryuill.art/archive/works/T_164 description: "Crucible Year: a continuous year of sumi ink painting on paper by Peter Yuill, begun 29 December 2025." source: generated from the Crucible Year master database --- Archive · full record # T_164 [The work as shown](https://peteryuill.art/works/T_164). Every value below comes from vae.db, the master database of the Crucible Year. ## Recorded - **Date:** 2026.04.03, day 96 - **Size:** 97 × 180 cm - **Paper:** S4, Tanxi half-raw, 6-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:** 7.2 - **Form:** 2 - **Tonal depth:** 2.6 - **Layering:** 2.4 - **Composition:** 2.6 - **Material and surface:** 2 - **Ink cover:** 74% - **Dark share:** 42% - **Tonal steps:** 4 - **Flaws named by the reads:** water stain 4, other 8, tide line 2 The V23 rating runs from 1 to 9, with 5 the middle of this body of work. It is the engine's reading, and the reference the archive is measured against. ## Older engine - **V7:** 8 From an earlier engine (V7). Its scale differs from V23's, so it is only ever compared with other readings by the same engine. ## 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](https://peteryuill.art/method). WHAT THE CODE SEES ## 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. ![T_164] ![T_164, tone-stretched] ![T_164, classed by brightness] 74% of the sheet carries ink TONAL STEPS ## 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: 0.055 (under 0.045 reads as flat). FIVE READS ## Five reads, agreeing on 2 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 READ 2 READ 3 READ 4 READ 5 MEAN Form 2 BUILT 2 BUILT 2 BUILT 2 BUILT 2 BUILT 2.0 Tonal depth 2 MODELLED 3 DEEP 3 DEEP 3 DEEP 2 MODELLED 2.6 Layering 2 LEGIBLE 3 ORDERED 3 ORDERED 2 LEGIBLE 2 LEGIBLE 2.4 Composition 3 COMMANDING 2 WORKING 2 WORKING 3 COMMANDING 3 COMMANDING 2.6 Material and surface 2 SOUND 2 SOUND 2 SOUND 2 SOUND 2 SOUND 2.0 ### READ 1, IN ITS OWN WORDS “A strong crescent composition with a shaped void and readable grey under-washes. The marks are good but uneven: the lower-left masses are slab-like and flatter, and there are minor pale water marks near the top. Overall above R2 but well short of R3.” Form · BUILT Main crescent follows brush travel from left round to right arm; lower band and bottom-left fragments are slab-like and broken, with clumsy joins. WEAKEST Bulky grey-black slab along the lower left band STRONGEST Rising dark right arm of the crescent Tonal depth · MODELLED Right arm and centre band show streaks, grain and dry-brush banding; lower-left dark wedge and bottom-centre dark are flatter. Modulation 0.055, four tonal steps. WEAKEST Dark lower-left band, fairly even inside STRONGEST Grained, spotted right arm with streaked interior Layering · LEGIBLE Translucent grey arcs and top-left panels sit under the black crescent and stay readable; only two or three passes, and the order is not built across the sheet. WEAKEST Bottom-left overlaps are cluttered and fragmentary STRONGEST Pale grey arc washes under the dark crescent Composition · COMMANDING A large crescent carries the eye from upper left, down, then up the right arm to the spatter; the open top centre is shaped by the arc. The bottom-left corner is busy. WEAKEST Fragmented bottom-left corner marks STRONGEST Sweeping crescent enclosing shaped empty top centre Material and surface · SOUND Ink is controlled, with dry-brush grain in the central band. Faint pale wash drops and stains in the top centre and top right, and a small white chip at the bottom edge, lie away from the main masses. WEAKEST Pale watery drip trails in the upper centre STRONGEST Dry-brush streaking in the central band FLAWS ## 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, 14 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. GEOMETRY ## Measured from the 16-bit master. The previous engine (V22) measured this sheet's master file: 1 principal ink mass traced (cyan), 7 enclosed voids at true size in their grid cells (amber), the main gesture from start to end (red). Of 15 edge segments, 20% crisp, 73% soft or bloomed, 7% broken. RULE 1 Two tonal steps or fewer Tonal depth held at rung 1. 4 steps: not applied RULE 2 A major flaw Material held at rung 1. Mild waves in the unmounted paper are never a flaw. none named RULE 3 Any quality below 0.5 The rating cannot exceed 4. lowest 2.0 RULE 4 At least two valid reads A read that breaks the reply format is discarded. 5 of 5 valid THE ARITHMETIC ## V23 rating 7.2. 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. MEAN RUNG 2.32 (2.0 + 2.6 + 2.4 + 2.6 + 2.0) ÷ 5 → RAW 5.64 1 + 2 × 2.32 → RATING 7.2 5 + 2.086 × (5.64 − 4.60) ## Where next [Every record the full archive](https://peteryuill.art/archive)[2026.04.03 every painting from this date](https://peteryuill.art/days/2026-04-03)