T_392
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, MC
- Phase
- P4 S14
- Shown on the site
- yes (V23 rating of 5.0 or higher)
Measured · V23 (v23.8)
- V23 rating
- 6.5
- Form
- 2
- Tonal depth
- 2
- Layering
- 2.8
- Composition
- 2
- Material and surface
- 2
- Ink cover
- 83%
- Dark share
- 68%
- Tonal steps
- 5
- Flaws named by the reads
- other 5, water stain 4, tide line 2
How the number was made
Read by the Visual Analysis Engine, version 23.8, on 2026.10.17: 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.
5 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: 0.058 (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
“Layered translucent passes build two facing masses with legible order, nearer R3's method but blockier. Left slab is stiff, dark cores fairly flat, composition working but heavy. Violet drops are deliberate colour.”
Right mass follows a curved brush travel with dry-brush ending; left mass is a stiff squared slab stack. Walls hold throughout.
WEAKEST Left block: bulky stacked rectangle, slab-like
STRONGEST Right arcing fan sweeping to dry-brush tail
Stepped greys at both masses' edges, five tonal plateaus; dark cores carry only paper-crinkle texture, modulation 0.058 modest, left core fairly flat.
WEAKEST Left block's dark core, near-uniform inside
STRONGEST Right fan's stepped grey bands toward black
Several translucent passes stack in clear order on both masses; overlapping edges stay legible and build depth, as in R3, though cores close up.
WEAKEST Dark cores where passes merge into one black
STRONGEST Translucent stacked edges of the right fan
Two masses face across a shaped white channel, spatter and violet drops carrying the eye; heavy coverage, left block inert and crowded to the edge.
WEAKEST Left block sits static, heavy against left edge
STRONGEST Gap with spatter linking the two masses
Ink controlled; violet drops are deliberate colour. Paper wrinkle texture in dark interiors and a small brownish mark near the left block corner are minor.
WEAKEST Small brownish spot at left block's top-right corner
STRONGEST Dry-brush tail of right fan, lower right
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.
5 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 6.5.
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.