T_280
The work as shown. Every value below comes from vae.db, the master database of the Crucible Year.
Recorded
- Date
- 2026.05.07, day 130
- Size
- 97 × 180 cm
- Paper
- S12, Red Star Mo She Special Effect Xieyi, half-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
- 6.2
- Form
- 2
- Tonal depth
- 2
- Layering
- 2
- Composition
- 2.4
- Material and surface
- 2
- Ink cover
- 86%
- Dark share
- 63%
- Tonal steps
- 5
- Flaws named by the reads
- water stain 10, bloom 1, overwork 1, other 1
Older engine
- V7
- 6
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: 0.064 (under 0.045 reads as flat).
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, IN ITS OWN WORDS
“A strong bowl composition of two sweeping arcs with good dry-brush on the left. The heavy central wedge and the flat right black hold the sheet near average. There are minor droplet spots in the grey washes.”
Both arcs follow the brush's travel, left arc especially, but the central lower wedge and right dark mass are slab-like and stiff where they meet.
WEAKEST Bulky dark wedge at bottom centre, blunt joins
STRONGEST Left sweeping arc with dry-brush striations following stroke
Left arc shows arcs and stepped greys; modulation 0.064 confirms life, but right lower black mass and central wedge read largely flat inside.
WEAKEST Right dark mass interior near-uniform black
STRONGEST Left arc banded greys with striated grain
Translucent grey passes sit under black arcs, readable at edges and upper right; in the centre-bottom the later black largely covers earlier passes.
WEAKEST Centre where passes crowd into dense black
STRONGEST Grey under-washes beneath left and right arcs
Two arcs form one great bowl carrying the eye across; the empty upper paper is shaped and active. Bottom centre is crowded with splatter and wedges.
WEAKEST Busy, congested bottom centre junction
STRONGEST Bowl-shaped sweep framing shaped empty top centre
Ink controlled with good dry-brush; scattered pale/dark droplet spots in upper right grey arc and lower left wash, small and not disrupting principal blacks.
WEAKEST Pale droplet spots in upper right arc
STRONGEST Dry-brush striations in left arc
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, 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.
Measured from the 16-bit master.
The previous engine (V22) measured this sheet's master file: 3 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 20 edge segments, 50% crisp, 25% soft or bloomed, 25% 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 6.2.
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.