Crucible Year Peter Yuill
Archive · full record

T_399

The work as shown. Every value below comes from vae.db, the master database of the Crucible Year.

Recorded

Date
2026.10.26, day 302
Size
97 × 180 cm
Paper
S13, Tianxuan Ge Dot Ink Becomes Gold, semi-cooked (self-sized), aged
Inks
MB6, MB8, MB9, MB10, MC
Phase
P4 S14
Shown on the site
yes (V23 rating of 5.0 or higher)

Measured · V23 (v23.11)

V23 rating
6.7
Form
2
Tonal depth
2
Layering
3
Composition
2
Material and surface
2
Ink cover
90%
Dark share
73%
Tonal steps
3
Flaws named by the reads
water stain 5, other 4, bloom 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.

Peter's own rating

Rating
5.75
Peter's rating is his own eye, not the engine's, and he never gives a 10.
“There is always something that can be done better.”
Peter Yuill · 2026.07.02

How the number was made

Read by the Visual Analysis Engine, version 23.11, on 2026.10.26: 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.

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_399T_399, tone-stretchedT_399, classed by brightness
90%of the sheet carries ink
Black 73%Grey 19% SHARE OF THE INK, NOT OF THE SHEET
TONAL STEPS

3 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: 0.053 (under 0.045 reads as flat).

0.300.75123 BLACK INK TRANSLUCENT GREYS PALEST INK, 0.88 LUMINANCE OF EVERY INKED PIXEL, 64 BINS. PAPER (ABOVE 0.88) IS LEFT OUT.
FIVE READS

Five reads, one answer.

Each quality placed on its ladder by each read, and the mean the engine keeps.

READ 1READ 2READ 3READ 4READ 5MEAN
Form2BUILT2BUILT2BUILT2BUILT2BUILT2.0
Tonal depth2MODELLED2MODELLED2MODELLED2MODELLED2MODELLED2.0
Layering3ORDERED3ORDERED3ORDERED3ORDERED3ORDERED3.0
Composition2WORKING2WORKING2WORKING2WORKING2WORKING2.0
Material and surface2SOUND2SOUND2SOUND2SOUND2SOUND2.0

READ 1, IN ITS OWN WORDS

“This is a radial, layered sheet in R3's mode, with legible translucent passes on the right. It is heavier and more crowded, with a blunt, flat-ish left slab and minor specks near the central gap.”

Form · BUILT

Arc bands around the central white hole hold their walls and follow the brush's travel. The big left rectangle and the top-right bar are stiff, blunt slabs.

WEAKEST Bulky rectangular slab dominating the left half

STRONGEST Curved arc bands circling the white core

Tonal depth · MODELLED

The right arcs step through several translucent greys. The left black mass is only mottled (modulation 0.053), and its darks read as surface, not depth.

WEAKEST Left dark block is nearly uniform inside

STRONGEST Stepped translucent greys in the right-side arcs

Layering · ORDERED

Many translucent wedge and arc passes overlap on the right and can be read in order. The overlaps build radial depth, much like R3.

WEAKEST Left block covers the earlier arcs beneath it

STRONGEST Overlapping fan of wedges on the right

Composition · WORKING

The radial movement and the white core with its vertical cut give the sheet direction. With 90% coverage it is crowded, and the left block sits dead and heavy.

WEAKEST Heavy left block crowds the left half

STRONGEST Radial sweep around the white core and vertical split

Material and surface · SOUND

The ink is controlled overall. There are small pale specks and blotches in the left-centre dark beside the vertical gap, and a minor dark spot at the lower left.

WEAKEST Pale specks inside the dark mass near the gap

STRONGEST Clean edges on the translucent wedges at 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.

1 × OTHER“pale mottled speckles in the upper-left arc b…”1 × WATER STAIN“pale spots beside central white gap, upper-le…”2 × OTHER, BLOOM“pale mottling inside the left dark slab”4 × WATER STAIN, OTHER“small pale specks in the dark mass beside the…”3 × OTHER, BLOOM, WATER STAIN“dark blot in the lower-left grey area”WATER STAINBLOOMOTHER
RULE 1Two tonal steps or fewer

Tonal depth held at rung 1.

3 steps: not applied
RULE 2A major flaw

Material held at rung 1. Mild waves in the unmounted paper are never a flaw.

none named
RULE 3Any quality below 0.5

The rating cannot exceed 4.

lowest 2.0
RULE 4At least two valid reads

A read that breaks the reply format is discarded.

5 of 5 valid
THE ARITHMETIC

V23 rating 6.7.

Engine v23.11, 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 RUNG2.20(2.0 + 2.0 + 3.0 + 2.0 + 2.0) ÷ 5
→
RAW5.401 + 2 × 2.20
→
RATING6.75 + 2.086 × (5.40 − 4.60)