---
title: "T_392, full record | Crucible Year"
url: https://peteryuill.art/archive/works/T_392
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_392

[The work as shown](https://peteryuill.art/works/T_392). 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

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 2026.10.17: 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](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_392]

![T_392, tone-stretched]

![T_392, classed by brightness]

83% of the sheet carries ink

TONAL STEPS

## 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

## 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 2 MODELLED 2 MODELLED 2 MODELLED 2 MODELLED 2 MODELLED 2.0

Layering 3 ORDERED 3 ORDERED 2 LEGIBLE 3 ORDERED 3 ORDERED 2.8

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

“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.”

Form · BUILT

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

Tonal depth · MODELLED

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

Layering · ORDERED

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

Composition · WORKING

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

Material and surface · SOUND

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

FLAWS

## 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.

RULE 1 Two tonal steps or fewer

Tonal depth held at rung 1. 5 steps: not 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 2.0

RULE 4 At least two valid reads

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

THE ARITHMETIC

## V23 rating 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.

MEAN RUNG 2.16 (2.0 + 2.0 + 2.8 + 2.0 + 2.0) ÷ 5
→

RAW 5.32 1 + 2 × 2.16
→

RATING 6.5 5 + 2.086 × (5.32 − 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)
