T_377
The work as shown. Every value below comes from vae.db, the master database of the Crucible Year.
Recorded
- Date
- 2026.09.12, day 258
- Size
- 100 × 90 cm
- Paper
- S14, Half-Cooked Red Star Mo She 6-Foot Bark Xuan Paper
- Inks
- MB6, MB7, MB8, MC
- Phase
- P4 S14
- 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
- 2.2
- Tonal depth
- 2
- Layering
- 3
- Composition
- 2
- Material and surface
- 2
- Ink cover
- 77%
- Dark share
- 57%
- Tonal steps
- 4
- Flaws named by the reads
- other 8, water stain 2
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.
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: 0.053 (under 0.045 reads as flat).
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, IN ITS OWN WORDS
“I placed this sheet on rung 3 for layering and rung 2 on the other four ladders. It has R3's radiating arcs and layered passes but less refinement. The lower-left block is bulky. The upper block is flat inside, the top right is crowded, and minor creases show in the darks.”
Arc segments mostly follow brush travel with dry-brush edges; lower-left slab reads bulky, its left end dissolving into spatter rather than a held wall.
WEAKEST Lower-left block, ragged spattered left end
STRONGEST Right arc band curving round the open centre
Stretched view shows grain and stepped density in right arcs and lower-left block; upper-centre dark block is mostly even; modulation 0.053 is only modest.
WEAKEST Upper dark block, fairly even interior
STRONGEST Right arcs with graded density and dark core
Several translucent passes of arcs and blocks overlap in clear order, pale outer rings under darker bands; sequence readable across right half like R3.
WEAKEST Dense overlaps at top right merge slightly
STRONGEST Translucent grey arcs overlapping beneath dark bands
Radiating fan gives direction and the left paper is shaped by spatter and faint rings; top right is heavy and crowded, the fan cropped awkwardly.
WEAKEST Crowded dark mass at top right
STRONGEST Fan of arcs radiating around right-edge centre
Ink controlled with dry-brush edges; stretched view shows paper crease lines through the dark blocks and speckled mottling in lower-left block, minor at viewing distance.
WEAKEST Crease marks across dark block interiors
STRONGEST Dry-brush trailing edges on arc ends
5 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 5 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.
Measured from the 16-bit master.
The previous engine (V22) measured this sheet's master file: 1 principal ink mass traced (cyan), 5 enclosed voids at true size in their grid cells (amber), the main gesture from start to end (red). Of 11 edge segments, 64% crisp, 36% soft or bloomed, 0% broken.
Tonal depth held at rung 1.
4 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 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.