Crucible Year Peter Yuill
Archive · full record

T_311

The work as shown. Every value below comes from vae.db, the master database of the Crucible Year.

Recorded

Date
2026.05.24, day 147
Size
97 × 180 cm
Paper
S10, Red Star Mo She Imitation Antique Chu bark, Exhibition Edition
Inks
MB4, MB5, MB6, MC
Phase
P3 The Floor Rises
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
6.5
Form
2
Tonal depth
2
Layering
2.4
Composition
2.4
Material and surface
2
Ink cover
76%
Dark share
69%
Tonal steps
4
Flaws named by the reads
other 6, mud 1, water stain 1
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.

Peter's own rating

Rating
8
Peter's rating is his own eye, not the engine's, and he never gives a 10.
“There is always something that can be done better.”
Peter Yuill · 2026.07.02

Older engine

V10C
7
From an earlier engine (V10C). 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.

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_311T_311, tone-stretchedT_311, classed by brightness
76%of the sheet carries ink
Black 69%Grey 26% SHARE OF THE INK, NOT OF THE SHEET
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: 0.067 (under 0.045 reads as flat).

0.300.751234 BLACK INK TRANSLUCENT GREYS PALEST INK, 0.88 LUMINANCE OF EVERY INKED PIXEL, 64 BINS. PAPER (ABOVE 0.88) IS LEFT OUT.
FIVE READS

Five reads, agreeing on 3 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 1READ 2READ 3READ 4READ 5MEAN
Form2BUILT2BUILT2BUILT2BUILT2BUILT2.0
Tonal depth2MODELLED2MODELLED2MODELLED2MODELLED2MODELLED2.0
Layering2LEGIBLE3ORDERED3ORDERED2LEGIBLE2LEGIBLE2.4
Composition2WORKING3COMMANDING2WORKING2WORKING3COMMANDING2.4
Material and surface2SOUND2SOUND2SOUND2SOUND2SOUND2.0

READ 1, IN ITS OWN WORDS

“A dark wedge and an arcing right mass frame a strong white S-curve. The right side has banded greys, but the left slab is bulky and fairly flat inside. A small blot sits in the open paper. Overall the sheet is solidly ordinary.”

Form · BUILT

Right mass curves in clean arcs that follow the stroke. The left diamond wedge holds its walls but is a blunt filled block with a ragged spattered edge.

WEAKEST Top-left wedge reads as a bulky filled slab

STRONGEST Right arcing band following the brush's sweep

Tonal depth · MODELLED

Modulation 0.067. The right mass shows curved banding and stepped greys, and the left wedge has saw-tooth darker zones. Large parts of the wedge stay an even dark.

WEAKEST Upper interior of left wedge largely flat

STRONGEST Banded arcs inside the right dark mass

Layering · LEGIBLE

Grey passes under the right black and the top band stay legible. The rose border sits as a separate pass. The sequence is not built up across the whole sheet.

WEAKEST Left wedge mostly a single dense pass

STRONGEST Translucent grey arcs overlapping on the right

Composition · WORKING

Diagonal movement from upper-left to lower-right, with a shaped white negative curve. The lower-left open paper is loosely occupied and slightly distracting.

WEAKEST Bottom-left paper with scattered drops and blot

STRONGEST S-shaped white channel between the two masses

Material and surface · SOUND

Colour border and blue drops are deliberate. A small speckled grey blot sits in the open paper below the wedge, away from the principal masses. The dark interiors are clean.

WEAKEST Granular grey blot below the wedge

STRONGEST Rose-violet border bleeding around the wedge

FLAWS

5 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 5 distinct places, 8 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.

2 × WATER STAIN, OTHER“faint tide edges in the top-centre grey overl…”1 × OTHER“speckled grey granular blot in open paper bel…”1 × OTHER“granular grey speckle blot right of the blue …”3 × OTHER“granulated grey speckle blot in white paper b…”1 × MUD“brownish cloudy dark wash, lower-right mass”WATER STAINMUDOTHER
GEOMETRY

Measured from the 16-bit master.

The previous engine (V22) measured this sheet's master file: 1 principal ink mass traced (cyan), 1 enclosed void at true size in its grid cells (amber), the main gesture from start to end (red). Of 17 edge segments, 41% crisp, 53% soft or bloomed, 6% broken.

A1B1C1D1E1F1A2B2C2D2E2F2A3B3C3D3E3F3H1
RULE 1Two tonal steps or fewer

Tonal depth held at rung 1.

4 steps: not applied
RULE 2A major flaw

Material held at rung 1. Mild waves in the unmounted paper are never a flaw.

none named
RULE 3Any quality below 0.5

The rating cannot exceed 4.

lowest 2.0
RULE 4At least two valid reads

A read that breaks the reply format is discarded.

5 of 5 valid
THE ARITHMETIC

V23 rating 6.5.

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 RUNG2.16(2.0 + 2.0 + 2.4 + 2.4 + 2.0) ÷ 5
→
RAW5.321 + 2 × 2.16
→
RATING6.55 + 2.086 × (5.32 − 4.60)