T_321
The work as shown. 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
- PT: probably trash (Peter's early system, since retired)
Measured · V23 (v23.8)
- V23 rating
- 6.2
- Form
- 2
- Tonal depth
- 2.2
- Layering
- 2.2
- Composition
- 2
- Material and surface
- 2
- Ink cover
- 62%
- Dark share
- 43%
- Tonal steps
- 3
- Flaws named by the reads
- other 5, water stain 3, bloom 4, ring 1
Peter's own rating
- Rating
- 6
“There is always something that can be done better.”Peter Yuill · 2026.07.02
Older engine
- V10C
- 7
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: 0.062 (under 0.045 reads as flat).
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 1, IN ITS OWN WORDS
“A strong layered arc on the right echoes R3. It is weakened by stiff, scattered marks on the left, a flat dark block, minor creases and a cloudy patch beside the arc.”
Right arcs follow the brush's travel fluently. Left-centre dark block is a blunt slab, and the far-left splash knot is lumpy; the walls hold but some marks are stiff.
WEAKEST Stiff dark rectangular slab, left-centre
STRONGEST Concentric arc bands sweeping around the right opening
Arc interiors show banding, grain and graded density, with modulation 0.062. The dark rectangle and left knot have little internal variation, and tonal steps are only 3.
WEAKEST Dark left-centre block nearly flat inside
STRONGEST Arc bands with dry-brush grain and stepped greys
Successive arcs overlap translucently. Grey outer bands sit under the darker inner and top-right passes, so the order can be read and builds depth across the right half.
WEAKEST Left marks are essentially single passes
STRONGEST Overlapping translucent arc passes in the right mass
The arc mass commands the right and leads inward. The left blocks and spatter feel scattered and weakly tied to it, and the upper-left paper reads partly as leftover.
WEAKEST Scattered left cluster and empty top-left paper
STRONGEST Arc spiral drawing the eye to the white opening
Dry-brush grain is well used in the arcs. Fine crease or crack lines cross the dark arcs, and a pale grey cloudy patch sits at the arc's left edge, mid-height.
WEAKEST Crease lines and pale cloud beside arc
STRONGEST Dry-brush grain in the arc bands
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, 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: 6 principal ink masses traced (cyan), 2 enclosed voids at true size in their grid cells (amber), the main gesture from start to end (red). Of 25 edge segments, 52% crisp, 12% soft or bloomed, 36% 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.