Crucible Year Peter Yuill
Archive · full record

T_364

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

Recorded

Date
2026.07.28, day 212
Size
97 × 180 cm
Paper
S14, Half-Cooked Red Star Mo She 6-Foot Bark Xuan Paper
Inks
MB6, MB7, MB8, MC
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
5
Form
2
Tonal depth
1
Layering
2
Composition
2
Material and surface
2
Ink cover
86%
Dark share
63%
Tonal steps
4
Flaws named by the reads
other 10, water stain 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.

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_364T_364, tone-stretchedT_364, classed by brightness
86%of the sheet carries ink
Black 63%Grey 31% 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: 0.033 (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, one answer.

Each quality placed on its ladder by each read, and the mean the engine keeps.

READ 1READ 2READ 3READ 4READ 5MEAN
Form2BUILT2BUILT2BUILT2BUILT2BUILT2.0
Tonal depth1THIN1THIN1THIN1THIN1THIN1.0
Layering2LEGIBLE2LEGIBLE2LEGIBLE2LEGIBLE2LEGIBLE2.0
Composition2WORKING2WORKING2WORKING2WORKING2WORKING2.0
Material and surface2SOUND2SOUND2SOUND2SOUND2SOUND2.0

READ 1, IN ITS OWN WORDS

“The radial fan follows the same idea as R3 but is heavier. The dense, flat black wedges crowd the sheet and bury the layering. The translucent fringes and central ring carry it. Overall an ordinary sheet.”

Form · BUILT

Radial arc segments follow the brush's travel and hold their walls. The large black wedges at bottom left and upper right are slab-heavy and filled in.

WEAKEST Bulky black wedge at bottom left

STRONGEST Inner ring and cut arc around the central circle

Tonal depth · THIN

Dark interior modulation of 0.033 counts as flat. The big black wedges show only faint banding. Greys exist mainly at the fringes and edges of the passes.

WEAKEST Flat black interior of the upper-left wedge

STRONGEST Grey arc fringes on the right fan

Layering · LEGIBLE

Several grey passes stay legible where they step out around the wedge edges. The violet ring sits under the black. The dense black passes hide the earlier layers.

WEAKEST Black wedges cover the earlier passes beneath them

STRONGEST Stacked translucent grey arcs at the fan edges

Composition · WORKING

A clear radial structure pivots on the white central circle. With 86% ink coverage the sheet is crowded and heavy, and the empty paper is mostly leftover corners.

WEAKEST Crowded lower-left quarter with little empty paper

STRONGEST Radial fan around the open central circle

Material and surface · SOUND

The ink is controlled. The violet is deliberate. There is a small violet run at the left edge and a few specks of paper spotting at bottom right, all away from the principal masses.

WEAKEST Violet drip run at the left edge

STRONGEST Dry-brush edges on the ring arcs

FLAWS

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, 11 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.

1 × OTHER“crease lines across the upper-left and top-ce…”4 × OTHER“violet run trailing off at the left edge”2 × OTHER“small ink specks along the bottom edge”4 × WATER STAIN, OTHER“small spots on the paper at bottom right”WATER STAINOTHER
GEOMETRY

Measured from the 16-bit master.

The previous engine (V22) measured this sheet's master file: 1 principal ink mass traced (cyan), 7 enclosed voids at true size in their grid cells (amber), the main gesture from start to end (red). Of 15 edge segments, 53% crisp, 40% soft or bloomed, 7% broken.

A1B1C1D1E1F1A2B2C2D2E2F2A3B3C3D3E3F3H1H2H3H4H5H6H7
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 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 5.0.

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 RUNG1.80(2.0 + 1.0 + 2.0 + 2.0 + 2.0) ÷ 5
→
RAW4.601 + 2 × 1.80
→
RATING5.05 + 2.086 × (4.60 − 4.60)