T_386
The work as shown. Every value below comes from vae.db, the master database of the Crucible Year.
Recorded
- Date
- 2026.10.16, day 292
- Size
- 97 × 180 cm
- Paper
- S14, Half-Cooked Red Star Mo She 6-Foot Bark Xuan Paper, self-sized
- Inks
- MB6, MB8, MB9, MB10
- Phase
- P4 S14
- Shown on the site
- yes (V23 rating of 5.0 or higher)
Measured · V23 (v23.8)
- V23 rating
- 5.2
- Form
- 2.2
- Tonal depth
- 1
- Layering
- 2
- Composition
- 2
- Material and surface
- 2
- Ink cover
- 80%
- Dark share
- 78%
- Tonal steps
- 2
- Flaws named by the reads
- other 10, dead ink 1
How the number was made
Read by the Visual Analysis Engine, version 23.8, on 2026.10.16: 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: 0.044 (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
“This is a radial fan like R3, but much heavier and flatter: 80% coverage, mostly one black family, and flat dark interiors. The arcs are coherent and the white eye anchors the sheet, but tonal life and layering are limited.”
Arc bands follow brush travel around the white circle, but the central right and lower dark fans read as filled slabs rather than made strokes.
WEAKEST Bulky filled dark mass right of centre
STRONGEST Radial arc bands with dry-brush tails, upper right
Dark share 0.78, two tonal steps, interior modulation 0.044 is flat; greys appear only at the fan tips, and the main masses are uniform black inside.
WEAKEST Uniform black interior of right-centre fan
STRONGEST Grey stepped fan tips at upper edges
Successive passes are legible at the fan edges, top right and left, but across the lower and central interiors the passes merge into one dark field.
WEAKEST Overlaps fused to black in lower centre
STRONGEST Stacked translucent fan tips, upper right edge
Radial movement around the white eye and the diagonal empty top-left give direction, but 80% coverage leaves the bottom and right crowded and heavy.
WEAKEST Crowded, heavy bottom band
STRONGEST Off-centre white circle with radiating fan
Ink is controlled and the dry-brush is used on the right; crumple creases show in the dark interiors, and small spatter dots sit in the top-left paper.
WEAKEST Paper creases visible through dark masses
STRONGEST Dry-brush streaking in right 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, 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.
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 1.0A read that breaks the reply format is discarded.
5 of 5 validV23 rating 5.2.
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.