--- title: "T_249, full record | Crucible Year" url: https://peteryuill.art/archive/works/T_249 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_249 [The work as shown](https://peteryuill.art/works/T_249). 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 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. ## Peter's own rating - **Rating:** 4 Peter's rating is his own eye, not the engine's, and he never gives a 10. > “There is always something that can be done better.” Peter Yuill · 2026.07.02 ## 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_249] ![T_249, tone-stretched] ![T_249, classed by brightness] 69% of the sheet carries ink TONAL STEPS ## 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 ## Five reads, one answer. Each quality placed on its ladder by each read, and the mean the engine keeps. 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 2 MODELLED 2 MODELLED 2 MODELLED 2 MODELLED 2.0 Layering 2 LEGIBLE 2 LEGIBLE 2 LEGIBLE 2 LEGIBLE 2 LEGIBLE 2.0 Composition 2 WORKING 2 WORKING 2 WORKING 2 WORKING 2 WORKING 2.0 Material and surface 2 SOUND 2 SOUND 2 SOUND 2 SOUND 2 SOUND 2.0 ### 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.” Form · BUILT 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 Tonal depth · MODELLED 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 Layering · LEGIBLE 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 Composition · WORKING 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 Material and surface · SOUND 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 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, 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. GEOMETRY ## 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. RULE 1 Two tonal steps or fewer Tonal depth held at rung 1. 5 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 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. MEAN RUNG 2.00 (2.0 + 2.0 + 2.0 + 2.0 + 2.0) ÷ 5 → RAW 5.00 1 + 2 × 2.00 → RATING 5.8 5 + 2.086 × (5.00 − 4.60) ## Where next [Every record the full archive](https://peteryuill.art/archive)[2026.04.21 every painting from this date](https://peteryuill.art/days/2026-04-21)