T_290
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, MC
- 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
- 77%
- Dark share
- 30%
- Tonal steps
- 3
- Flaws named by the reads
- other 6, water stain 5
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.
3 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: 0.041 (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 fluent large arc with a shaped open centre, but the dark band is flat inside, the passes are few, the terminations are blocky and creases run through the mass. It is an ordinary, working sheet near R2.”
Large enso-like arc holds its walls and follows the stroke; the stepped dark/grey terminations near centre-right read stiff and filled in rather than drawn.
WEAKEST Stepped blunt grey block ending the inner arc, lower right
STRONGEST Sweeping outer arc following brush travel left side
Outer grey bands carry streaks and graded arcs; the main dark band is measured flat (0.041) and reads as an even slab across the top.
WEAKEST Dark inner band interior, top centre, nearly uniform
STRONGEST Outer grey band with streaked dry-brush arcs, left
Outer pale pass, darker inner band, a dry-brush crossing stroke and a dark block at right remain readable; ordering is limited to about three passes.
WEAKEST Dark band partly covers earlier grey passes
STRONGEST Dry-brush grey stroke crossing the open centre
The arc carries the eye round to the dark right terminus and shapes the central void; the lower-right quarter is weak and loosely occupied.
WEAKEST Bottom-right paper feels leftover beside spatters
STRONGEST Circular sweep framing the open white centre
Ink controlled with good dry-brush grain at left; wrinkles and a fold line at top centre crease through the dark mass; blue spatters are deliberate colour.
WEAKEST Paper creases cutting across the dark band
STRONGEST Dry-brush streaking in outer grey band
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, 11 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), 5 enclosed voids at true size in their grid cells (amber), the main gesture from start to end (red). Of 21 edge segments, 43% crisp, 33% soft or bloomed, 24% broken.
Tonal depth held at rung 1.
3 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.