---
title: "T_250, full record | Crucible Year"
url: https://peteryuill.art/archive/works/T_250
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_250

[The work as shown](https://peteryuill.art/works/T_250). 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:** SA: save, archive (Peter's early system, since retired)

## Measured · V23 (v23.8)

- **V23 rating:** 5
- **Form:** 2
- **Tonal depth:** 2
- **Layering:** 2
- **Composition:** 2
- **Material and surface:** 1
- **Ink cover:** 69%
- **Dark share:** 31%
- **Tonal steps:** 5

- **Flaws named by the reads:** bloom 8, water stain 2, ring 3

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:** 4

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_250]

![T_250, tone-stretched]

![T_250, 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: 0.054 (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 1 FLAWED 1 FLAWED 1 FLAWED 1 FLAWED 1 FLAWED 1.0

### READ 1, IN ITS OWN WORDS

“A gestural wave sweep with some tonal life in the right diagonal. It is ordinary in form, layering and composition, and cellular water blooms in the central sweep mark the surface. It is closest to R2.”

Form · BUILT

Wave sweep from left down through centre to right reads as a coherent form; left dark mass is lumpy and frayed, so some bulk remains.

WEAKEST Left dark mass, ragged lobed outline

STRONGEST Right diagonal dark sweep following brush travel

Tonal depth · MODELLED

Right dark band shows streaks and stepped density; five tonal steps, modulation 0.054; left black mass flatter inside.

WEAKEST Left dark mass interior fairly uniform

STRONGEST Right diagonal band with streaked grey grading

Layering · LEGIBLE

Pale grey sweeps lie under darker strokes at right and left; overlaps readable, but only two or three passes and little ordered build-up.

WEAKEST Centre where droplets blur the grey pass

STRONGEST Dark diagonal over pale grey wash, right

Composition · WORKING

Wave-like curve gives direction and shapes the empty top paper; right edge black fragment and busy lower right feel crowded.

WEAKEST Crowded right edge with cut-off black mass

STRONGEST Wave curve carrying eye left to right

Material and surface · FLAWED

Clusters of ringed, cellular drop blooms sit inside the central grey sweep, visible in colour view; read as water spotting rather than chosen structure.

WEAKEST Cellular water-drop blooms in centre sweep

STRONGEST Dry-brush streaks in right diagonal band

FLAWS

## 6 distinct places, 1 major.

Each read must name every flaw and where it is, in a ninth of the sheet. Here the reads named flaws in 6 distinct places, 13 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. A major flaw holds Material and surface at rung 1.

GEOMETRY

## Measured from the 16-bit master.

The previous engine (V22) measured this sheet's master file: 1 principal ink mass traced (cyan), 10 enclosed voids at true size in their grid cells (amber), the main gesture from start to end (red). Of 17 edge segments, 12% crisp, 53% soft or bloomed, 35% 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. 4 major flaws: applied

RULE 3 Any quality below 0.5

The rating cannot exceed 4. lowest 1.0

RULE 4 At least two valid reads

A read that breaks the reply format is discarded. 5 of 5 valid

THE ARITHMETIC

## V23 rating 5.0.

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.

MEAN RUNG 1.80 (2.0 + 2.0 + 2.0 + 2.0 + 1.0) ÷ 5
→

RAW 4.60 1 + 2 × 1.80
→

RATING 5.0 5 + 2.086 × (4.60 − 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)
