T_339
The work as shown. Every value below comes from vae.db, the master database of the Crucible Year.
Recorded
- Date
- 2026.06.03, day 157
- Size
- 97 × 180 cm
- Paper
- S12, Red Star Mo She Special Effect Xieyi, half-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
- 8.2
- Form
- 2.4
- Tonal depth
- 2.6
- Layering
- 3
- Composition
- 2.8
- Material and surface
- 2
- Ink cover
- 78%
- Dark share
- 52%
- Tonal steps
- 4
- Flaws named by the reads
- ring 1, other 5, water stain 4
Peter's own rating
- Rating
- 7
“There is always something that can be done better.”Peter Yuill · 2026.07.02
Older engine
- V10C
- 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.
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: 0.056 (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
“Fan of layered arc segments close to R3's idiom: ordered translucent passes, graded greys, shaped void. Lowest black arc somewhat bulky, right side crowded, minor blots at left keep material at sound.”
Arc segments follow brush travel around a common centre; walls hold with dry-brush ends. Lowest black arc is bulky but still curved and made.
WEAKEST heavy lowest black arc, slightly slab-like at left end
STRONGEST upper black trapezoid segment with clean dragged walls
Modulation 0.056, four tonal steps; tone-stretched view shows arcs, grain and crackle inside black masses, and a stepped range of greys outward to paper.
WEAKEST darkest lower arc near-uniform at left end
STRONGEST right-side grey segments graded with brush banding
Pale grey fan segments laid first, mid greys then black over them; overlaps read clearly across top and right, building depth in sequence.
WEAKEST black arcs partly cover earlier grey passes
STRONGEST translucent pale segments overlapping at upper left
One sweeping arc carries eye from left to bottom right; the inner white void and upper-left paper are shaped. Weight crowds right edge somewhat.
WEAKEST bottom-right crop feels heavy and cut
STRONGEST sweeping fan arc around the open lower-centre void
Ink controlled with dry-brush edges; small blot/ring marks in pale grey at left edge; crinkle network across darks reads as paper texture, not major.
WEAKEST small pale blots in left grey wash
STRONGEST dry-brush grain at segment ends, upper centre
3 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 3 distinct places, 10 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: 1 principal ink mass traced (cyan), 2 enclosed voids at true size in their grid cells (amber), the main gesture from start to end (red). Of 16 edge segments, 38% crisp, 31% soft or bloomed, 31% broken.
Tonal depth held at rung 1.
4 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 8.2.
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.