T_383
The work as shown. Every value below comes from vae.db, the master database of the Crucible Year.
Recorded
- Date
- 2026.09.20, day 266
- Size
- 50 × 100 cm
- Paper
- S14, Half-Cooked Red Star Mo She 6-Foot Bark Xuan Paper
- 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
- 1.4
- Layering
- 2.6
- Composition
- 2
- Material and surface
- 1
- Ink cover
- 82%
- Dark share
- 53%
- Tonal steps
- 4
- Flaws named by the reads
- other 9, water stain 5, dead ink 3
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: 0.036 (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
“An arc structure close to R3, with legible stepped passes, but the dark core is flat and heavy. The top-left blocks are stiff, and blots mar the right arc's grey band.”
Concentric arcs hold their walls and follow the brush's sweep; top-left blocks are bulky rectangles with stiff, clumsy joins to the main arc.
WEAKEST Slab-like rectangular blocks at top left
STRONGEST Separate right arc, clean curved walls
Measured dark modulation 0.036 is flat; the central black mass is near-uniform. The outer grey bands and four tonal steps give graded tone around it.
WEAKEST Central black arc mass flat inside
STRONGEST Stepped grey bands at outer arc edges
Several translucent arc passes overlap in a readable order, especially at the lower-left and outer rim. The dark core hides some of the passes beneath.
WEAKEST Dark core covers earlier passes beneath it
STRONGEST Stepped translucent bands at left and lower arcs
The main arc sweeps strongly and the right arc echoes it. The bottom-left void is shaped, but 82% coverage makes the centre heavy and crowded.
WEAKEST Crowded, heavy dark mass filling centre-right
STRONGEST Right arc echoing the main sweep
A teardrop blot and mottled wash sit inside the right arc's pale band, and drips are scattered at the top right, all visible in colour. Elsewhere the ink is controlled.
WEAKEST Teardrop blot inside right arc's grey band
STRONGEST Dry-brush stepped edges on lower arcs
4 distinct places, 1 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, 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. A major flaw holds Material and surface at rung 1.
Tonal depth held at rung 1.
4 steps: not appliedMaterial held at rung 1. Mild waves in the unmounted paper are never a flaw.
1 major flaw: appliedThe rating cannot exceed 4.
lowest 1.0A read that breaks the reply format is discarded.
5 of 5 validV23 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.