Crucible Year Peter Yuill
Archive · full record

T_344

The work as shown. 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
7.2
Form
2.6
Tonal depth
2
Layering
3
Composition
2
Material and surface
2
Ink cover
80%
Dark share
67%
Tonal steps
5
Flaws named by the reads
water stain 1, other 8, bloom 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
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
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.

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_344T_344, tone-stretchedT_344, classed by brightness
80%of the sheet carries ink
Black 67%Grey 25%Light 8% SHARE OF THE INK, NOT OF THE SHEET
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: 0.046 (under 0.045 reads as flat).

0.300.7512345 BLACK INK TRANSLUCENT GREYS PALEST INK, 0.88 LUMINANCE OF EVERY INKED PIXEL, 64 BINS. PAPER (ABOVE 0.88) IS LEFT OUT.
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 1READ 2READ 3READ 4READ 5MEAN
Form2BUILT2BUILT3FLUENT3FLUENT3FLUENT2.6
Tonal depth2MODELLED2MODELLED2MODELLED2MODELLED2MODELLED2.0
Layering3ORDERED3ORDERED3ORDERED3ORDERED3ORDERED3.0
Composition2WORKING2WORKING2WORKING2WORKING2WORKING2.0
Material and surface2SOUND2SOUND2SOUND2SOUND2SOUND2.0

READ 1, IN ITS OWN WORDS

“This radial fan has the same idea as R3, with legible translucent layering. It is heavier and more crowded, though: the darks are nearly flat inside, several blocks are stiff and slab-like, and there are minor blots in the centre.”

Form · BUILT

The arc bands follow the fan's sweep, and their walls hold. Several inner blocks, especially the left-centre slab, are stiff filled rectangles rather than fluent strokes.

WEAKEST Blunt rectangular slab at left-centre, x≈190-300

STRONGEST Tapering radial wedge, upper right, following brush travel

Tonal depth · MODELLED

Dark interior modulation is 0.046, only just above flat. Brush banding shows in the upper-right wedge and in the outer arcs, but the dense centre-left darks read as flat.

WEAKEST Heavy central dark mass, nearly uniform inside

STRONGEST Banded brush-grain in the large upper-right dark wedge

Layering · ORDERED

There are five tonal steps. Translucent grey arcs overlap the darker bands, and the order of passes reads clearly across the fan, from the pale top rim to the dark core.

WEAKEST Dense centre where the overlaps darken toward uniformity

STRONGEST Translucent outer grey arcs overlapping the darker inner bands

Composition · WORKING

The fan sweeps from lower left to upper right around a white hub, so the arrangement has direction. The ink covers 80% of the sheet, the centre is crowded, and the empty upper left is only partly shaped.

WEAKEST Crowded, heavy dark centre-left of the fan

STRONGEST Radial sweep around the paper hub at lower right

Material and surface · SOUND

The ink is controlled and the arcs are evenly laid. Small drop-blots in the centre-left dark bands are faint in the colour view and clear only in the stretched view. There are slight streaks at the bottom.

WEAKEST Small blots inside the centre-left dark band

STRONGEST Dry-brush grain at the edges of the right wedges

FLAWS

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.

5 × WATER STAIN, OTHER“small drop blots inside the dark arc band, ce…”2 × OTHER“small dark drip streaks near the bottom edge …”3 × BLOOM, OTHER“feathered bleed at inner edge of white hub”WATER STAINBLOOMOTHER
GEOMETRY

Measured from the 16-bit master.

The previous engine (V22) measured this sheet's master file: 2 principal ink masses traced (cyan), 3 enclosed voids at true size in their grid cells (amber), the main gesture from start to end (red). Of 16 edge segments, 56% crisp, 38% soft or bloomed, 6% broken.

A1B1C1D1E1F1A2B2C2D2E2F2A3B3C3D3E3F3H1H2H3
RULE 1Two tonal steps or fewer

Tonal depth held at rung 1.

5 steps: not applied
RULE 2A major flaw

Material held at rung 1. Mild waves in the unmounted paper are never a flaw.

none named
RULE 3Any quality below 0.5

The rating cannot exceed 4.

lowest 2.0
RULE 4At least two valid reads

A read that breaks the reply format is discarded.

5 of 5 valid
THE ARITHMETIC

V23 rating 7.2.

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 RUNG2.32(2.6 + 2.0 + 3.0 + 2.0 + 2.0) ÷ 5
→
RAW5.641 + 2 × 2.32
→
RATING7.25 + 2.086 × (5.64 − 4.60)