T_381
The work as shown. Every value below comes from vae.db, the master database of the Crucible Year.
Recorded
- Date
- 2026.09.25, day 271
- Size
- 97 × 180 cm
- Paper
- S10, Red Star Mo She Imitation Antique Chu bark, Exhibition Edition
- Inks
- MB6, MB8, MB9
- Phase
- P4 S14
- Shown on the site
- yes (V23 rating of 5.0 or higher)
Measured · V23 (v23.8)
- V23 rating
- 5
- Form
- 2
- Tonal depth
- 1
- Layering
- 2
- Composition
- 2
- Material and surface
- 2
- Ink cover
- 82%
- Dark share
- 78%
- Tonal steps
- 2
- Flaws named by the reads
- other 15, dead ink 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.
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: 0.047 (under 0.045 reads as flat).
Five reads, one answer.
Each quality placed on its ladder by each read, and the mean the engine keeps.
READ 1, IN ITS OWN WORDS
“A radial-arc S-composition in the vein of R3, but heavier and darker. The fluent, layered upper fan is offset by a dense, near-flat lower mass. The sheet is ordinary overall.”
Upper arcs follow the brush's rotation cleanly, with crisp stepped ends. The lower half swells into a heavy slab where the separate strokes are lost.
WEAKEST Bulky, undifferentiated lower dark mass
STRONGEST Fanned arc strokes in the upper head
Dark interior modulation of 0.047 is barely above flat, with only 2 tonal steps. The upper fan shows graded bands, but the lower mass reads as one dense dark.
WEAKEST Lower-left dark mass, nearly flat in colour view
STRONGEST Graded translucent arcs at top and right edge
Many overlapping arcs stay readable at the top and right edges. In the lower body the passes build up into a single dark where their order is lost.
WEAKEST Stacked passes fused in the lower mass
STRONGEST Overlapping translucent arcs on upper right
The vertical S-movement and the two cut-in white notches give the sheet direction. The heavy lower half fills the frame, so the empty paper is only edge leftovers.
WEAKEST Crowded, heavy bottom half with little paper
STRONGEST S-curve rising through the two white notches
The ink is controlled, with clean arc edges. Faint crease and wrinkle lines cross the dark mass, there are scattered drops at top right, and the paper has a beige tint. None disrupts a principal form.
WEAKEST Crease lines crossing the central dark mass
STRONGEST Dry-brush stepped edges of the upper arcs
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, 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.
Tonal depth held at rung 1.
2 steps: 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 validCaps the code applied: {"run_id":"T_381","cap_no":1,"read_no":1,"cap_text":"sample 1: T 2->1: tonal_steps=2 (<=2)"}; {"run_id":"T_381","cap_no":2,"read_no":2,"cap_text":"sample 2: T 2->1: tonal_steps=2 (<=2)"}; {"run_id":"T_381","cap_no":3,"read_no":3,"cap_text":"sample 3: T 2->1: tonal_steps=2 (<=2)"}; {"run_id":"T_381","cap_no":4,"read_no":4,"cap_text":"sample 4: T 2->1: tonal_steps=2 (<=2)"}; {"run_id":"T_381","cap_no":5,"read_no":5,"cap_text":"sample 5: T 2->1: tonal_steps=2 (<=2)"}.
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.