T_400
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
- Phase
- P4 S14
- Shown on the site
- yes (V23 rating of 5.0 or higher)
Measured · V23 (v23.11)
- V23 rating
- 6.3
- Form
- 2.4
- Tonal depth
- 1
- Layering
- 3
- Composition
- 2.2
- Material and surface
- 2
- Ink cover
- 87%
- Dark share
- 70%
- Tonal steps
- 2
- Flaws named by the reads
- other 9, water stain 1
Peter's own rating
- Rating
- 6.75
“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.
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: 0.045 (under 0.045 reads as flat).
Five reads, agreeing on 3 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 uses the same radial-band method as R3 but is denser and darker. The layering is legible and ordered, but the central blacks are flat, the coverage crowds the sheet and the wide wedges feel slab-like. Overall it is ordinary to slightly better.”
Radial bands and arcs hold their walls and follow the rotation, but several wide wedges, especially at left and lower right, are slab-like fills.
WEAKEST Bulky wedge slab at left middle
STRONGEST Curved arc bands circling the right hole
Outer bands step through translucent greys, but the central dark masses read flat in colour; interior modulation 0.0447 measures as flat.
WEAKEST Near-uniform black core around the left circle
STRONGEST Stepped greys in the outer radial bands
Many translucent radial and arc passes overlap legibly, and the tone-stretched view shows a clear stacking order; only the central junction thickens toward a single dark.
WEAKEST Dense black overlaps where the two circles meet
STRONGEST Translucent stacked bands on both outer rims
Two radial wheels with white cores make a strong paired movement, but 87% coverage crowds the sheet; the empty paper is mostly leftover corners.
WEAKEST Crowded dark centre with little open paper
STRONGEST Twin white holes anchoring a rotating figure-eight
Ink is controlled, with clean edges at the holes; there are small specks top left and in the left hole and a faint pink tint, all away from the principal masses.
WEAKEST Stray spatter specks at top left
STRONGEST Dry-brush edges on the radial band ends
3 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 3 distinct places, 10 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 2.0A read that breaks the reply format is discarded.
5 of 5 validCaps the code applied: {"run_id":"T_400","cap_no":1,"read_no":1,"cap_text":"sample 1: T 2->1: tonal_steps=2 (<=2)"}; {"run_id":"T_400","cap_no":2,"read_no":2,"cap_text":"sample 2: T 2->1: tonal_steps=2 (<=2)"}; {"run_id":"T_400","cap_no":3,"read_no":3,"cap_text":"sample 3: T 2->1: tonal_steps=2 (<=2)"}; {"run_id":"T_400","cap_no":4,"read_no":4,"cap_text":"sample 4: T 2->1: tonal_steps=2 (<=2)"}; {"run_id":"T_400","cap_no":5,"read_no":5,"cap_text":"sample 5: T 2->1: tonal_steps=2 (<=2)"}.
V23 rating 6.3.
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.