---
title: "T_387, full record | Crucible Year"
url: https://peteryuill.art/archive/works/T_387
description: "Crucible Year: a continuous year of sumi ink painting on paper by Peter Yuill, begun 29 December 2025."
source: generated from the Crucible Year master database
---

Archive · full record

# T_387

[The work as shown](https://peteryuill.art/works/T_387). Every value below comes from vae.db, the master database of the Crucible Year.

## Recorded

- **Date:** 2026.10.16, day 292
- **Size:** 110 × 97 cm
- **Paper:** S13, Tianxuan Ge Dot Ink Becomes Gold, semi-cooked (self-sized), aged
- **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
- **Tonal depth:** 1
- **Layering:** 2.2
- **Composition:** 2
- **Material and surface:** 2
- **Ink cover:** 83%
- **Dark share:** 65%
- **Tonal steps:** 2

- **Flaws named by the reads:** water stain 5, other 7, dead ink 3

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.

## 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](https://peteryuill.art/method).

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_387]

![T_387, tone-stretched]

![T_387, classed by brightness]

83% of the sheet carries ink

TONAL STEPS

## 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: 0.036 (under 0.045 reads as flat).

FIVE READS

## 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 READ 2 READ 3 READ 4 READ 5 MEAN

Form 2 BUILT 2 BUILT 2 BUILT 2 BUILT 2 BUILT 2.0

Tonal depth 1 THIN 1 THIN 1 THIN 1 THIN 1 THIN 1.0

Layering 3 ORDERED 2 LEGIBLE 2 LEGIBLE 2 LEGIBLE 2 LEGIBLE 2.2

Composition 2 WORKING 2 WORKING 2 WORKING 2 WORKING 2 WORKING 2.0

Material and surface 2 SOUND 2 SOUND 2 SOUND 2 SOUND 2 SOUND 2.0

### READ 1, IN ITS OWN WORDS

“This radial fan is related to R3 and has good translucent layering, but the dark masses are flat inside, the sheet is crowded and the lower-right bands are blocky. Overall it is ordinary to slightly above, near R2.”

Form · BUILT

The fan blades follow the brush's arc and end in sharp spikes. The stacked horizontal bands at lower right are slab-like and filled in.

WEAKEST Blocky horizontal slabs, lower right

STRONGEST Radial blades tapering to spikes, upper left

Tonal depth · THIN

Measured modulation inside the darks is 0.036 (flat), with only 2 tonal steps. The large left and centre blacks are uniform; tone changes only at the overlap edges.

WEAKEST Flat black interior of left fan mass

STRONGEST Grainy translucent greys at the outer rim

Layering · ORDERED

Many translucent radial passes overlap in a readable order and build toward the centre. The outer edges show each pass, but the core blacks fuse together.

WEAKEST Central darks where passes merge to black

STRONGEST Translucent stacked blades around the outer rim

Composition · WORKING

The fan rotates around a small white hook, and the white wedge at the bottom is shaped. At 83% coverage the sheet is crowded, and the lower-right block is heavy.

WEAKEST Crowded, heavy lower-right block

STRONGEST White hook and wedge opening at centre bottom

Material and surface · SOUND

The ink is controlled and the edges are crisp. A beige stain at the top-left corner, small drops at the bottom and creases all sit away from the principal masses.

WEAKEST Tinted stained paper in top-left corner

STRONGEST Dry-brush grain at the blade edges

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, 15 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.

RULE 1 Two tonal steps or fewer

Tonal depth held at rung 1. 2 steps: applied

RULE 2 A major flaw

Material held at rung 1. Mild waves in the unmounted paper are never a flaw. none named

RULE 3 Any quality below 0.5

The rating cannot exceed 4. lowest 1.0

RULE 4 At least two valid reads

A read that breaks the reply format is discarded. 5 of 5 valid

THE ARITHMETIC

## V23 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.

MEAN RUNG 1.84 (2.0 + 1.0 + 2.2 + 2.0 + 2.0) ÷ 5
→

RAW 4.68 1 + 2 × 1.84
→

RATING 5.2 5 + 2.086 × (4.68 − 4.60)

## Where next

[Every record the full archive](https://peteryuill.art/archive)[2026.10.16 every painting from this date](https://peteryuill.art/days/2026-10-16)
