T_249
The work as shown. Every value below comes from vae.db, the master database of the Crucible Year.
Recorded
- Date
- 2026.04.21, day 114
- Size
- 70 × 180 cm
- Paper
- S3, Tanxi Jing Pi, raw
- Inks
- MB4, MB5, MB6
- Phase
- P2 The Switch
- Shown on the site
- yes (V23 rating of 5.0 or higher)
- Early storage triage
- SHP: save, has potential (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
- 69%
- Dark share
- 42%
- Tonal steps
- 5
- Flaws named by the reads
- water stain 3, other 4, bloom 2
Peter's own rating
- Rating
- 4
“There is always something that can be done better.”Peter Yuill · 2026.07.02
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.
5 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: 0.061 (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
“Gestural sweeping arc with a busy splattered left mass, a blunt centre wedge and a fluent right crescent. The movement is good, but the left side is crowded and some darks are flat. An ordinary sheet near R2.”
Right crescent and long grey sweep follow brush travel; centre wedge is blunt; left mass is a lobed splash with weak walls.
WEAKEST Left dark mass, splattered and lobed, edges dissolve
STRONGEST Right crescent stroke sweeping upward
Five tonal steps; grey band shows striation and grading; left mass mottled; centre wedge and lower right dark fairly uniform inside.
WEAKEST Centre dark wedge, largely flat interior
STRONGEST Grey sweep with brush striation and graded density
Pale grey arc pass under darker strokes stays readable at right and centre; left cluster overlaps less clearly ordered.
WEAKEST Left area where dark splashes clot over greys
STRONGEST Dark crescent laid over translucent grey arc at right
Long arc carries eye across sheet; upper empty paper shaped by the curve; left quarter crowded and congested with splatter.
WEAKEST Crowded, busy left cluster
STRONGEST Continuous swooping arc from left to upper right
Ink controlled overall; slightly milky cloudy grey around left mass and pale patch beside it; no tide lines in principal darks.
WEAKEST Cloudy grey wash halo around left mass
STRONGEST Dry-brush striation inside right crescent and grey sweep
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, 9 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), 5 enclosed voids at true size in their grid cells (amber), the main gesture from start to end (red). Of 16 edge segments, 25% crisp, 63% soft or bloomed, 13% broken.
Tonal depth held at rung 1.
5 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.