T_189
The work as shown. Every value below comes from vae.db, the master database of the Crucible Year.
Recorded
- Date
- 2026.04.08, day 101
- Size
- 97 × 180 cm
- Paper
- S11, Red Star Mo She Special Effect Xieyi, 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
- 6
- Form
- 2
- Tonal depth
- 2
- Layering
- 2
- Composition
- 2.2
- Material and surface
- 2
- Ink cover
- 70%
- Dark share
- 25%
- Tonal steps
- 3
- Flaws named by the reads
- ring 5, other 5, dead ink 2
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.
3 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: 0.041 (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
“Strong sweeping dry-brush arc gives real movement and grain, but the central dark hook is bulky and flat inside, layering is two-pass, and small ringed drips sit below the arc.”
Arc's outline follows the stroke travel cleanly; central dark hook is a blunt, lobed fill with clumsy joins; lower-right wedge is serviceable but slab-like.
WEAKEST Central dark hook mass, bulky and lobed at joins
STRONGEST Great dry-brush arc following the brush's sweep
Arc shows banding and dry-brush grain; tone-stretched view shows the central dark mass flat inside; measured dark modulation 0.041 confirms flat darks.
WEAKEST Central dark hook interior uniform flat grey
STRONGEST Arc's streaked grain and banded dark stripes
Grey arc and wedge as first pass, dark hook and strokes laid over; overlaps read clearly but only two passes, not building depth.
WEAKEST Dark hook simply covers the grey arc
STRONGEST Grey arc under dark hook strokes remains readable
Large arc carries the eye from bottom left over the top into the hook and out the rightward wedge; open paper below the arc is shaped and active.
WEAKEST Lower-right wedge cut off, slightly heavy
STRONGEST Sweeping arc driving the eye into central hook
Dry-brush grain controlled in arc; small pale-ringed drips bottom left and fine crease cracks through arc are minor, away from main dark mass.
WEAKEST Pale-ringed drops and crease lines
STRONGEST Dry-brush bristle grain across the arc
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, 12 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), 7 enclosed voids at true size in their grid cells (amber), the main gesture from start to end (red). Of 15 edge segments, 27% crisp, 53% soft or bloomed, 20% broken.
Tonal depth held at rung 1.
3 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 6.0.
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.