--- title: "T_344, full record | Crucible Year" url: https://peteryuill.art/archive/works/T_344 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_344 [The work as shown](https://peteryuill.art/works/T_344). 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](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_344] ![T_344, tone-stretched] ![T_344, classed by brightness] 80% of the sheet carries ink 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). 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 3 FLUENT 3 FLUENT 3 FLUENT 2.6 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 2 SOUND 2 SOUND 2 SOUND 2 SOUND 2.0 ### 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. 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. RULE 1 Two tonal steps or fewer Tonal depth held at rung 1. 5 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 2.0 RULE 4 At 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 RUNG 2.32 (2.6 + 2.0 + 3.0 + 2.0 + 2.0) ÷ 5 → RAW 5.64 1 + 2 × 2.32 → RATING 7.2 5 + 2.086 × (5.64 − 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)