Crucible Year Peter Yuill
Archive · full record

T_355

The work as shown. Every value below comes from vae.db, the master database of the Crucible Year.

Recorded

Date
2026.06.14, day 168
Size
180 × 97 cm
Paper
S10, Red Star Mo She Imitation Antique Chu bark, Exhibition Edition
Inks
MB4, MB5, MB6
Phase
P3 The Floor Rises
Shown on the site
yes (V23 rating of 5.0 or higher)
Early storage triage
SHP: save, has potential (Peter's early system, since retired)

Measured · V23 (v23.8)

V23 rating
6.8
Form
2.4
Tonal depth
2
Layering
2.8
Composition
2
Material and surface
2
Ink cover
90%
Dark share
62%
Tonal steps
4
Flaws named by the reads
water stain 3, other 6, 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
9
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_355T_355, tone-stretchedT_355, classed by brightness
90%of the sheet carries ink
Black 62%Grey 30%Light 9% SHARE OF THE INK, NOT OF THE SHEET
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: 0.043 (under 0.045 reads as flat).

0.300.751234 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 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 1READ 2READ 3READ 4READ 5MEAN
Form2BUILT2BUILT3FLUENT3FLUENT2BUILT2.4
Tonal depth2MODELLED2MODELLED2MODELLED2MODELLED2MODELLED2.0
Layering3ORDERED2LEGIBLE3ORDERED3ORDERED3ORDERED2.8
Composition2WORKING2WORKING2WORKING2WORKING2WORKING2.0
Material and surface2SOUND2SOUND2SOUND2SOUND2SOUND2.0

READ 1, IN ITS OWN WORDS

“The arc-and-fan construction is related to R3 and the passes are legibly layered. But the sheet is crowded, the central dark is flat, and the lower mass is bulky, which keeps it near ordinary.”

Form · BUILT

Arc sweeps and the fan follow the brush's travel and their walls hold. The big lower-left dark mass reads as filled-in bulk, not a fluent stroke.

WEAKEST bulky filled lower-left dark quarter-disc

STRONGEST radiating fan strokes at bottom right

Tonal depth · MODELLED

The tone-stretched view shows banding in the upper arcs and the fan. Dark interior modulation is 0.043, below the flat threshold, so the main dark core stays flat.

WEAKEST central dark core of lower arc mass

STRONGEST banded greys in upper arc sweeps

Layering · ORDERED

Several translucent arc passes overlap in a readable order across the upper spiral and the bottom fan. Overlaps build depth, though they thicken toward the centre.

WEAKEST dense centre where passes stack toward black

STRONGEST overlapping translucent fan blades at bottom

Composition · WORKING

A strong S-spiral moves the eye from the top arc to the bottom fan. At 90% coverage it is crowded, and the only shaped space is the small left notch.

WEAKEST crowded sheet with little shaped empty paper

STRONGEST S-shaped double spiral carrying the eye downward

Material and surface · SOUND

The ink is controlled, with bristle grain at the arc edges. Mottled cloudiness inside the lower-left mass shows only in the stretched view. Stray dots sit at the bottom right.

WEAKEST cloudy mottling inside lower-left dark mass

STRONGEST dry-brush bristle grain on arc edges

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.

4 × WATER STAIN, OTHER“cloudy mottling inside the upper part of the …”1 × DEAD INK“flat, slightly cloudy interior of central dar…”5 × OTHER“stray ink spatter dots near the bottom-right …”WATER STAINDEAD INKOTHER
GEOMETRY

Measured from the 16-bit master.

The previous engine (V22) measured this sheet's master file: 1 principal ink mass traced (cyan), 4 enclosed voids at true size in their grid cells (amber), the main gesture from start to end (red). Of 13 edge segments, 39% crisp, 39% soft or bloomed, 23% broken.

A1B1C1A2B2C2A3B3C3A4B4C4A5B5C5A6B6C6H1H2H3H4
RULE 1Two tonal steps or fewer

Tonal depth held at rung 1.

4 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 6.8.

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 RUNG2.24(2.4 + 2.0 + 2.8 + 2.0 + 2.0) ÷ 5
→
RAW5.481 + 2 × 2.24
→
RATING6.85 + 2.086 × (5.48 − 4.60)