---
title: "T_342, full record | Crucible Year"
url: https://peteryuill.art/archive/works/T_342
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_342

[The work as shown](https://peteryuill.art/works/T_342). Every value below comes from vae.db, the master database of the Crucible Year.

## Recorded

- **Date:** 2026.06.06, day 160
- **Size:** 70 × 140 cm
- **Paper:** S6, Qing Yi 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:** 6.2
- **Form:** 2
- **Tonal depth:** 2
- **Layering:** 3
- **Composition:** 2
- **Material and surface:** 1.4
- **Ink cover:** 80%
- **Dark share:** 52%
- **Tonal steps:** 4

- **Flaws named by the reads:** water stain 6, other 3, dead ink 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:** 7

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:** 8

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_342]

![T_342, tone-stretched]

![T_342, classed by brightness]

80% of the sheet carries ink

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: 0.034 (under 0.045 reads as flat).

FIVE READS

## Five reads, agreeing on 4 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 2 MODELLED 2 MODELLED 2 MODELLED 2.0

Layering 3 ORDERED 3 ORDERED 3 ORDERED 3 ORDERED 3 ORDERED 3.0

Composition 2 WORKING 2 WORKING 2 WORKING 2 WORKING 2 WORKING 2.0

Material and surface 2 SOUND 1 FLAWED 2 SOUND 1 FLAWED 1 FLAWED 1.4

### READ 1, IN ITS OWN WORDS

“A layered fan around an arch, in R3's mode but weaker. The layering is ordered and legible, but the dark masses are flat inside. The left slabs and bottom-left block are blunt and crowd the arrangement.”

Form · BUILT

The arc bands around the central arch are coherent and follow the stroke's travel. The left horizontal bars and the bottom-left block are blunt slabs of ink.

WEAKEST Bottom-left rectangular slab, bulky and blunt

STRONGEST Concentric arch bands following the brush's travel

Tonal depth · MODELLED

Four tonal steps and a good range of greys in the outer arcs. The dark-interior modulation of 0.034 is flat, and the central black fan and bottom-left block are uniform inside.

WEAKEST Flat central dark fan and bottom-left block

STRONGEST Translucent grey arc bands with dry-brush grain

Layering · ORDERED

Several translucent passes overlap legibly across the fan. Their order is readable, and the stepped overlaps build depth toward the central arch.

WEAKEST Bottom-left block covers the lower passes

STRONGEST Overlapping translucent arc segments around the arch

Composition · WORKING

The radiating arch gives a clear direction into the small white opening. The left bars and the heavy bottom-left block feel added on, and the lower-centre white is leftover.

WEAKEST Heavy bottom-left block crowding the lower edge

STRONGEST Radiating fan drawing the eye into the arch

Material and surface · SOUND

The ink is controlled, with grain at the band edges. The bottom-left block has small mottled blotches, and the dark fan shows faint crease lines. These are minor at viewing distance.

WEAKEST Mottled blotches inside the bottom-left dark block

STRONGEST Dry-brush grain at the edges of the arc bands

FLAWS

## 4 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 4 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.

GEOMETRY

## Measured from the 16-bit master.

The previous engine (V22) measured this sheet's master file: 11 principal ink masses traced (cyan), 5 enclosed voids at true size in their grid cells (amber), the main gesture from start to end (red). Of 45 edge segments, 49% crisp, 49% soft or bloomed, 2% broken.

RULE 1 Two tonal steps or fewer

Tonal depth held at rung 1. 4 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 1.4

RULE 4 At least two valid reads

A read that breaks the reply format is discarded. 5 of 5 valid

THE ARITHMETIC

## V23 rating 6.2.

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.

MEAN RUNG 2.08 (2.0 + 2.0 + 3.0 + 2.0 + 1.4) ÷ 5
→

RAW 5.16 1 + 2 × 2.08
→

RATING 6.2 5 + 2.086 × (5.16 − 4.60)

## Where next

[Every record the full archive](https://peteryuill.art/archive)[2026.06.06 every painting from this date](https://peteryuill.art/days/2026-06-06)
