T_309
The work as shown. Every value below comes from vae.db, the master database of the Crucible Year.
Recorded
- Date
- 2026.05.14, day 137
- 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
- 6.2
- Form
- 2.4
- Tonal depth
- 2
- Layering
- 2
- Composition
- 2.8
- Material and surface
- 1.2
- Ink cover
- 71%
- Dark share
- 27%
- Tonal steps
- 5
- Flaws named by the reads
- bloom 4, ring 4, water stain 5, tide line 1, other 1
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.
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: 0.039 (under 0.045 reads as flat).
Five reads, agreeing on 2 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, commanding S-sweep with good dry-brush handling, held back by a flat black core, only two passes, and a milky bleed patch beside the grey wash at top left.”
Main S-stroke follows brush travel throughout, with split-bristle striations at the tail; the left grey arc is built from the same sweep; the dark head is slightly heavy.
WEAKEST bulky dark head of stroke, upper right
STRONGEST dry-brush S-sweep from bottom centre to right
The grey wash and the stroke tail show grain and arcs, but the black core is broadly flat (modulation 0.039, under 0.045); there are five tonal steps.
WEAKEST dense black core of stroke, upper centre-right
STRONGEST striated grey tail of the sweep
The grey circular wash pass and the black sweep stay distinct where they cross at centre-left; there are only about two passes, and the black hides what lies beneath it at right.
WEAKEST black core covers underlying grey
STRONGEST black stroke over the grey circular wash, left-centre
The S-curve carries the eye from the bottom-left arc to the right edge; the empty paper top-centre and bottom-right is shaped by the curve; the top-left corner is weaker.
WEAKEST pale feathered patch, top left
STRONGEST diagonal S-curve crossing the whole sheet
A pale, cloudy feathered patch and bleed edge sit against the grey wash at top left, and a whorled ring sits inside the grey mass at left-centre; both are visible in the colour view.
WEAKEST milky bleed edge, top-left grey wash
STRONGEST dry-brush bristle striations in stroke tail
6 distinct places, 2 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, 15 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.
Measured from the 16-bit master.
The previous engine (V22) measured this sheet's master file: 2 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 19 edge segments, 42% crisp, 32% soft or bloomed, 26% 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.
3 major flaws: appliedThe rating cannot exceed 4.
lowest 1.2A 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.