T_194
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
- 5
- Form
- 1.8
- Tonal depth
- 1.4
- Layering
- 2
- Composition
- 2
- Material and surface
- 1.8
- Ink cover
- 46%
- Dark share
- 17%
- Tonal steps
- 3
- Flaws named by the reads
- bloom 2, water stain 5, other 4, tide line 3
Older engine
- V7
- 7
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: 0.039 (under 0.045 reads as flat).
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, IN ITS OWN WORDS
“An energetic sweep with a good dry-brush fan, but the dark masses are flat blobs and the lower right is cluttered with lobed drops. Ordinary, at or slightly below R2.”
Grey arc and right dry-brush fan follow the brush's travel, but the lower-right lobes and the fish-shaped lower-left blot are puddled blobs, not made strokes.
WEAKEST Lobed dark blobs lower right, random puddled shapes
STRONGEST Long grey arc sweeping from upper left
Fan and grey arc show grain and streaks, but the dark masses are flat inside (modulation 0.039). Only three tonal plateaus. Close call resolved down.
WEAKEST Flat dark interiors of blobs and upper band
STRONGEST Striated dry-brush fan at right
A translucent grey sweep and fan, then dark strokes and drops on top. The overlaps stay readable, but only about two passes.
WEAKEST Lower-right blobs sit as separate drops
STRONGEST Dark band laid over grey sweep, upper centre
The curving sweep gives clear movement and the open left with spatter has shape. The lower-right cluster of blots is crowded and scattered.
WEAKEST Crowded blob cluster lower right
STRONGEST Diagonal arc carrying eye toward right fan
Ink mostly controlled and dry-brush texture used at right. Mottled blotches in the grey arc and a trail of grey spots at bottom centre are minor.
WEAKEST Mottled cloudy patches inside grey arc
STRONGEST Dry-brush grain in right fan
5 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 5 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.
Measured from the 16-bit master.
The previous engine (V22) measured this sheet's master file: 7 principal ink masses traced (cyan), 6 enclosed voids at true size in their grid cells (amber), the main gesture from start to end (red). Of 27 edge segments, 41% crisp, 22% soft or bloomed, 37% 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 1.4A read that breaks the reply format is discarded.
5 of 5 validV23 rating 5.0.
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.