---
title: "T_260, full record | Crucible Year"
url: https://peteryuill.art/archive/works/T_260
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_260

[The work as shown](https://peteryuill.art/works/T_260). Every value below comes from vae.db, the master database of the Crucible Year.

## Recorded

- **Date:** 2026.04.26, day 119
- **Size:** 97 × 180 cm
- **Paper:** S4, Tanxi half-raw, 6-foot
- **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:** 5.5
- **Form:** 2
- **Tonal depth:** 2
- **Layering:** 2
- **Composition:** 2
- **Material and surface:** 1.6
- **Ink cover:** 78%
- **Dark share:** 46%
- **Tonal steps:** 4

- **Flaws named by the reads:** other 9, water stain 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_260]

![T_260, tone-stretched]

![T_260, classed by brightness]

78% of the sheet carries ink

TONAL STEPS

## 4 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: 0.050 (under 0.045 reads as flat).

FIVE READS

## 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 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 1 FLAWED 1 FLAWED 2 SOUND 2 SOUND 1.6

### READ 1, IN ITS OWN WORDS

“A heavy central slab with fluent satellite strokes and spatter. There is modest tonal banding and legible grey-under-black passes. The lower half is crowded. Ordinary overall, close to R2.”

Form · BUILT

The big central mass is a bulky slab with a curled right end. The top-left comma stroke and the lower-left arcs are fluent. The pale left wedge is stiff.

WEAKEST Central slab is bulky and rectangular

STRONGEST Top-left hooked stroke with dry-brush tail

Tonal depth · MODELLED

Modulation is 0.050, just above flat. The stretched view shows a darker core band and grey bands inside the slab. The black core and the top-left stroke are fairly flat.

WEAKEST Central black core fairly uniform

STRONGEST Central slab's graded grey edges and banding

Layering · LEGIBLE

Grey wash passes sit under the central slab and the left wedge, with black strokes laid over them. Two or three passes can be read, but the black largely covers the greys.

WEAKEST Black core partly covers earlier grey

STRONGEST Grey wash under slab with black over it

Composition · WORKING

The top-left hook and the faint right arc lead the eye around to the heavy central slab. The lower half is crowded with splatter. The empty paper at the top is partly shaped.

WEAKEST Dominant slab crowds the lower centre

STRONGEST Top-left hook leading toward the right arc

Material and surface · SOUND

Crease and fold lines cross the slab interior in the stretched view. There are small stray blots at top left and left. No tide lines or blooms were found in the principal masses.

WEAKEST Crease lines visible inside central mass

STRONGEST Dry-brush tails on the lower-left arcs

FLAWS

## 3 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 3 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.

GEOMETRY

## Measured from the 16-bit master.

The previous engine (V22) measured this sheet's master file: 2 principal ink masses traced (cyan), 8 enclosed voids at true size in their grid cells (amber), the main gesture from start to end (red). Of 17 edge segments, 29% crisp, 53% soft or bloomed, 18% broken.

RULE 1 Two tonal steps or fewer

Tonal depth held at rung 1. 4 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 1.6

RULE 4 At least two valid reads

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

THE ARITHMETIC

## V23 rating 5.5.

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 1.92 (2.0 + 2.0 + 2.0 + 2.0 + 1.6) ÷ 5
→

RAW 4.84 1 + 2 × 1.92
→

RATING 5.5 5 + 2.086 × (4.84 − 4.60)

## Where next

[Every record the full archive](https://peteryuill.art/archive)[2026.04.26 every painting from this date](https://peteryuill.art/days/2026-04-26)
