Crucible Year Peter Yuill
Archive · full record

T_348

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
S7, Qing Yi cooked
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
5.7
Form
2.2
Tonal depth
1
Layering
2.4
Composition
2.2
Material and surface
2
Ink cover
85%
Dark share
55%
Tonal steps
2
Flaws named by the reads
other 11, water stain 4, dead ink 1, tide line 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
9
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_348T_348, tone-stretchedT_348, classed by brightness
85%of the sheet carries ink
Black 55%Grey 31%Light 14% SHARE OF THE INK, NOT OF THE SHEET
TONAL STEPS

2 families of tone.

Every inked pixel's brightness in 64 bins, smoothed; each circled peak holds at least 4% of the ink. Two or fewer: Tonal depth is held at the bottom rung whatever the model reads. A dense sheet of many translucent passes can count low here, so Layering is left to the reads. Life inside the black: 0.030 (under 0.045 reads as flat).

0.300.7512 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 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 1READ 2READ 3READ 4READ 5MEAN
Form3FLUENT2BUILT2BUILT2BUILT2BUILT2.2
Tonal depth1THIN1THIN1THIN1THIN1THIN1.0
Layering3ORDERED2LEGIBLE2LEGIBLE2LEGIBLE3ORDERED2.4
Composition3COMMANDING2WORKING2WORKING2WORKING2WORKING2.2
Material and surface2SOUND2SOUND2SOUND2SOUND2SOUND2.0

READ 1, IN ITS OWN WORDS

“A radial double-fan sheet close to R3 in structure and layering, with fluent arcs and a strong central void. The dark interiors are measured as flat and the coverage is heavy, so it sits below R3.”

Form · FLUENT

Radial wedges and arc bands follow the brush's curved travel and the walls hold. The small rectangular blocks near the centre-right are a little slab-like but minor.

WEAKEST Small stacked rectangles left of the right fan

STRONGEST Outer curved arc bands sweeping round both fans

Tonal depth · THIN

The tone-stretched view shows grain in the paler wedges, but dark interior modulation is 0.030 with only two tonal steps, so the main black masses are flat inside.

WEAKEST Central black interiors of both fans

STRONGEST Dry-brush grain in the upper left wedge

Layering · ORDERED

Several translucent passes overlap in a readable order, with grey arcs under darker wedges in both fans. The overlap edges stay crisp and build depth outward.

WEAKEST Dense core where the darkest passes merge

STRONGEST Translucent grey wedges overlapping the outer arcs

Composition · COMMANDING

Two radial fans open around a white central void and a vertical channel, with a strong arch movement. Coverage of 0.85 leaves the paper with little room except the centre.

WEAKEST Heavy coverage crowding the lower corners

STRONGEST Central vertical gap opening into the pale arch

Material and surface · SOUND

The ink is controlled and the edges are clean. There is a small white speck in the right fan and fine crease lines across the darks; the faint top-right grey haze is minor.

WEAKEST White speck in the right dark mass

STRONGEST Dry-brush streaking at the wedge edges

FLAWS

6 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 6 distinct places, 17 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, TIDE LINE“faint grey haze in the paper at top right”1 × DEAD INK“flat black core of left wing”3 × OTHER“small white speck or hole inside the right fa…”3 × OTHER“small white speck/blot inside right dark slab”1 × OTHER“small stray drip near the inner circle”WHOLE SHEET · 4 × OTHERWATER STAINTIDE LINEDEAD INKOTHER
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, 38% crisp, 56% soft or bloomed, 6% broken.

A1B1C1D1E1F1A2B2C2D2E2F2A3B3C3D3E3F3H1H2H3
RULE 1Two tonal steps or fewer

Tonal depth held at rung 1.

2 steps: 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 1.0
RULE 4At least two valid reads

A read that breaks the reply format is discarded.

5 of 5 valid
THE ARITHMETIC

V23 rating 5.7.

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 RUNG1.96(2.2 + 1.0 + 2.4 + 2.2 + 2.0) ÷ 5
→
RAW4.921 + 2 × 1.96
→
RATING5.75 + 2.086 × (4.92 − 4.60)