T_326
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
- SA: save, archive (Peter's early system, since retired)
Measured · V23 (v23.8)
- V23 rating
- 5.8
- Form
- 2
- Tonal depth
- 2.6
- Layering
- 2
- Composition
- 2
- Material and surface
- 1.4
- Ink cover
- 69%
- Dark share
- 23%
- Tonal steps
- 7
- Flaws named by the reads
- other 9, water stain 6
Peter's own rating
- Rating
- 6
“There is always something that can be done better.”Peter Yuill · 2026.07.02
Older engine
- V10C
- 10
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.
7 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: 0.066 (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 circular sweep with a well-modelled black arc and legible grey passes. A blunt stepped ending, crowded spatter at lower right and stray smudged marks in the central void hold it near an ordinary-to-good level.”
The great arc follows the brush's travel cleanly, but the dark band ends in a stiff stepped block where it meets the grey wedge right of centre.
WEAKEST Blunt stepped end of the dark band, lower right
STRONGEST Sweeping outer grey arc following brush travel
Dark interior modulation is 0.066 and there are seven tonal steps. Brush arcs show inside the black mass, and the grey bands carry dry-brush grain and graded steps.
WEAKEST Lower-right grey wedge is fairly even inside
STRONGEST Dark arc mass with streaked banding inside
Three passes (pale outer ring, mid-grey band, black arc) stay legible where they overlap. The order is readable, but there is no deep build-up of translucent layers.
WEAKEST Dark pass partly covers the grey under it
STRONGEST Pale outer ring beside the mid-grey band
The arc carries the eye around the sheet and gives the empty centre a shape. The spattered lower-right corner is crowded, and the stray marks in the centre weaken the void.
WEAKEST Busy spatter and wedge zone, lower right
STRONGEST Enclosing arc shaping the central empty paper
A grey smudge with scribble marks sits in the centre and is visible in the colour view. A vertical crease line cuts through the black mass. The centre paper looks faintly cloudy.
WEAKEST Stray smudged marks in central empty paper
STRONGEST Dry-brush grain on the outer left arc
2 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 2 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: 3 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 18 edge segments, 22% crisp, 67% soft or bloomed, 11% broken.
Tonal depth held at rung 1.
7 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 1.4A read that breaks the reply format is discarded.
5 of 5 validV23 rating 5.8.
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.