T_349
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
- 7.5
- Form
- 2.2
- Tonal depth
- 2
- Layering
- 3
- Composition
- 2.8
- Material and surface
- 2
- Ink cover
- 76%
- Dark share
- 57%
- Tonal steps
- 3
- Flaws named by the reads
- other 14, water stain 1, dead ink 1
Peter's own rating
- Rating
- 8
“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.


3 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: 0.031 (under 0.045 reads as flat).
Five reads, agreeing on 3 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
“A radial double fan close to R3 in structure, with legible, ordered translucent layering and a shaped central void. The black masses are flatter and bulkier than R3's, and minor crease lines mark the edges.”
Arc bands follow the brush's radial travel and their edges hold, but the large left black wedge reads as a filled slab with a heavy outline.
WEAKEST Bulky flat black wedge, left centre
STRONGEST Stepped arc bands of right fan
The grey arcs show grain, banding and stepped density inside. Dark interior modulation is 0.031, so the main black masses on both sides are flat inside.
WEAKEST Flat interior of left black wedge
STRONGEST Graded grey bands, lower centre-left
Several translucent passes stack in a readable order: pale outer rings, then mid greys, then black. The overlaps build radial depth on both halves.
WEAKEST Black passes cover greys at left
STRONGEST Overlapping translucent arcs in right fan
The two fans turn around a central white channel and top arc. The empty paper is shaped and the radial movement carries the eye, though the left half weighs heavy.
WEAKEST Heavy, crowded left mass
STRONGEST Central vertical gap between two fans
The ink is controlled and dry-brush grain shows in the greys. Fold or crease lines cross the left edge and the bottom right, and stray marks sit near the top centre.
WEAKEST Crease lines at left edge and bottom
STRONGEST Dry-brush grain in grey bands
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, 16 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: 2 principal ink masses traced (cyan), 6 enclosed voids at true size in their grid cells (amber), the main gesture from start to end (red). Of 18 edge segments, 89% crisp, 11% soft or bloomed, 0% broken.
Tonal depth held at rung 1.
3 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 7.5.
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.