--- title: "T_320, full record | Crucible Year" url: https://peteryuill.art/archive/works/T_320 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_320 [The work as shown](https://peteryuill.art/works/T_320). Every value below comes from vae.db, the master database of the Crucible Year. ## Recorded - **Date:** 2026.05.31, day 154 - **Size:** 97 × 180 cm - **Paper:** S11, Red Star Mo She Special Effect Xieyi, raw - **Inks:** MB4, MB5, MB6 - **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:** 2.2 - **Layering:** 2.2 - **Composition:** 2.4 - **Material and surface:** 2 - **Ink cover:** 60% - **Dark share:** 33% - **Tonal steps:** 5 - **Flaws named by the reads:** water stain 2, other 7, tide line 2 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:** 9 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](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_320] ![T_320, tone-stretched] ![T_320, classed by brightness] 60% of the sheet carries ink TONAL STEPS ## 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: 0.054 (under 0.045 reads as flat). FIVE READS ## 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 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 3 DEEP 2 MODELLED 2 MODELLED 2.2 Layering 2 LEGIBLE 2 LEGIBLE 3 ORDERED 2 LEGIBLE 2 LEGIBLE 2.2 Composition 3 COMMANDING 3 COMMANDING 2 WORKING 2 WORKING 2 WORKING 2.4 Material and surface 2 SOUND 2 SOUND 2 SOUND 2 SOUND 2 SOUND 2.0 ### READ 1, IN ITS OWN WORDS “A spiralling composition of nested arcs with a strong sweep and a well-shaped open centre. The grey masses are fairly flat inside, the central wedge is blunt, and the splatter at right is loose. Better than R2 on composition.” Form · BUILT Inner dark arc and upper dark band follow the brush's travel; the central grey wedge is a bulky slab with a squared lower end; the right splatter is loose. WEAKEST Central grey wedge ends in a blunt, filled-in edge STRONGEST Inner dark arc, left, with dry-brush tail Tonal depth · MODELLED Dark arcs show streaking and banding (modulation 0.054); the outer grey band and the central wedge are mostly even mid-grey with little internal grading. WEAKEST Upper-left grey band, flat and even inside STRONGEST Upper dark band with streaks and stepped density Layering · LEGIBLE Grey wash passes lie under the dark arcs and stay readable; the dark band over the grey wedge is clear; roughly three passes, not a sustained sequence. WEAKEST Right splatter zone blurs the order of passes STRONGEST Dark arc laid legibly over the grey band, left Composition · COMMANDING Nested arcs carry the eye from lower left, up over the top and out into the splash at right; the open centre paper is strongly shaped. WEAKEST Busy drip and splatter cluster at right STRONGEST Spiralling sweep of arcs around the open centre Material and surface · SOUND Ink is mostly controlled with good dry-brush edges; the central grey wedge has a slightly milky mottle; stray drops at top right and drips at lower right. WEAKEST Mottled, cloudy interior of central grey wedge STRONGEST Dry-brush tail on the inner arc 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, 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. GEOMETRY ## Measured from the 16-bit master. The previous engine (V22) measured this sheet's master file: 2 principal ink masses traced (cyan), 4 enclosed voids at true size in their grid cells (amber), the main gesture from start to end (red). Of 19 edge segments, 32% crisp, 32% soft or bloomed, 37% broken. RULE 1 Two tonal steps or fewer Tonal depth held at rung 1. 5 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 2.0 RULE 4 At 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 RUNG 2.16 (2.0 + 2.2 + 2.2 + 2.4 + 2.0) ÷ 5 → RAW 5.32 1 + 2 × 2.16 → RATING 6.5 5 + 2.086 × (5.32 − 4.60) ## Where next [Every record the full archive](https://peteryuill.art/archive)[2026.05.31 every painting from this date](https://peteryuill.art/days/2026-05-31)