--- title: "T_127, sumi ink on paper | Crucible Year" url: https://peteryuill.art/works/T_127 description: "T_127 by Peter Yuill: A black arc sweeps down through a tall grey block on a long sheet of xuan, pale planes and spatter crowding round it. Sumi ink on Qing Yi Half-Raw Xuan, 70 × 140 cm, 2026.03.22. Crucible Year." source: generated from the Crucible Year master database --- ![A black diagonal arc crosses a large grey central block among pale grey planes, with spatter above and black blots lower left and right.] ![T_127, tone-stretched: what the model was shown] ![T_127: every pixel as the measuring code classes it] 70 × 140 cm · the whole sheet, uncropped # T_127 The engine's reading A black arc sweeps down through a tall grey block on a long sheet of xuan, pale planes and spatter crowding round it. Record - **Date:** 2026.03.22 - **Dimensions:** 70 × 140 cm - **Paper:** [Qing Yi Half-Raw Xuan](https://peteryuill.art/papers/S6) - **Ink:** [Kuretake Shogei Kiwami](https://peteryuill.art/inks/MB1), [Yi De Ge Zhonghua](https://peteryuill.art/inks/MB2), [Boku-Undo Bokkou](https://peteryuill.art/inks/MB3) [Enquire about T_127](https://peteryuill.art/enquiries?work=T_127) Availability, price or a studio visit. Peter replies himself; asking commits you to nothing. The black diagonal is the scar of a staircase. When a building comes down in the middle of a street, it leaves its neighbour's wall standing bare, and on that wall you can read where the stairs ran, a dark slant climbing through grey squares that were rooms. I stop for these. Pale ghosts of wallpaper, a square where a mirror hung, a fireplace floating halfway up with no floor beneath it. The spatter up top is dust still settling from the morning's work. At the right the cables from the site run off past the edge, humming. And at the foot of the slant, small and black, the digger has parked for lunch with its bucket down, like a dog guarding what it found. Neon [Who Neon is](https://peteryuill.art/neon) Detail at full resolution, cut by code where the brushwork is finest · select to enlarge [Details](https://peteryuill.art/works/T_127#details)[The reading](https://peteryuill.art/works/T_127#reading)[How it was read](https://peteryuill.art/works/T_127#read)[Date](https://peteryuill.art/works/T_127#date)[Materials](https://peteryuill.art/works/T_127#materials)[Related](https://peteryuill.art/works/T_127#related) The engine's reading ## The reading Written by the engine after the painting was rated, from the settled findings, and checked by hand before approval. It explains the numbers; it may not change them. - **Structure:** grey central block cut by a black arc, flanked by pale slabs - **Movement:** diagonal from top centre down to the right; side slabs stand still - **Coverage:** ink on about three quarters of the paper - **Tone:** four tonal steps, weighted to the middle greys - **Layering:** three kinds of pass, pale, mid grey and black, clearest along the arc - **Edges:** crisp on the arc and right blot; soft on the grey slabs; broken in spatter - **Feibai:** present, in the dark V-shaped mass at the top of the central block - **Open paper:** pale band across the top, widest at top centre and right - **Chance marks:** spatter over top and right; droplet rows left of centre; stain at lower left - **Frame:** ink runs off left, bottom and right; top edge stays mostly open A black arc drops from the top of the centre and sweeps down to the right, splitting a great grey block. Around it, paler planes stack like panes of smoked glass, spatter flies off the top, and two black blots sit low at either side. The eye takes the diagonal first and stays with it. The arc is where the sheet comes alive. Its walls hold all the way down. Its tone grades as the brush loads and empties, and it lies cleanly over the translucent grey beneath, so the passes read in order. Above it, in the V-shaped mass, the hairs part into flying white, quick streaks of bare paper inside the dark. The block itself is too much. It sits square and heavy in the middle. Toward its base the greys pile up on a half-sized paper that cannot keep them apart, and they fuse into a murky brown-grey. The side slabs are near-flat pale fills, and a cloudy stain spreads beside the lower-left dark. So one stroke moves and the rest stands round it. This is a typical sheet: a real gesture inside a crowd of rectangles that never get going. Measured ## How it was read Read by the Visual Analysis Engine, version 23.8, on 2026.10.06: 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_127] ![T_127, tone-stretched] ![T_127, classed by brightness] 75% of the sheet carries ink TONAL STEPS ## 4 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: 0.049 (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 2 LEGIBLE 2 LEGIBLE 2 LEGIBLE 2 LEGIBLE 2 LEGIBLE 2.0 Composition 2 WORKING 2 WORKING 2 WORKING 2 WORKING 2 WORKING 2.0 Material and surface 1 FLAWED 2 SOUND 1 FLAWED 2 SOUND 1 FLAWED 1.4 ### READ 1, IN ITS OWN WORDS “A busy, layered sheet held together by a strong diagonal sweep. The slab forms are bulky, the dark masses are partly flat, and the bottom edge is crowded. A cloudy smudge at lower left lowers the material score. Overall an ordinary sheet, close to R2.” Form · BUILT The diagonal arc stroke follows the brush's travel. The central grey block and left slabs are bulky rectangles, and the bottom-right blot is a lumpy form. WEAKEST Bulky grey slab block in the centre STRONGEST Diagonal curved dark sweep crossing the centre Tonal depth · MODELLED The central mass shows streaking, grain and stepped density, and the diagonal shows graded tone. The right blot and lower-left dark are flat. Modulation is 0.049, only just above the flat threshold. WEAKEST Bottom-right black blot, flat inside STRONGEST Central grey block with grain and dry-brush streaks Layering · LEGIBLE Pale translucent planes, a mid-grey block and a dark diagonal can each be read. Toward the base of the centre the overlaps thicken and the order becomes less clear. WEAKEST Central overlaps darken toward murk at the base STRONGEST Pale grey planes under the dark diagonal stroke Composition · WORKING The diagonal gives the sheet a direction, and the top-right paper is shaped. Coverage is heavy at 75%. Masses jam against the bottom edge, and the left planes are static. WEAKEST Crowded bottom edge with cut-off masses STRONGEST Diagonal sweep driving from top-centre to lower right Material and surface · FLAWED A cloudy, muddy grey patch sits beside the lower-left dark mass, and the centre is murky. Fold creases and grime spots across the left planes show in the colour view. WEAKEST Cloudy smudged wash at lower left STRONGEST Dry-brush streaking within the central block FLAWS ## 7 distinct places, 1 major. Each read must name every flaw and where it is, in a ninth of the sheet. Here the reads named flaws in 7 distinct places, 13 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. A major flaw holds Material and surface at rung 1. GEOMETRY ## Measured from the 16-bit master. The previous engine (V22) measured this sheet's master file: 1 principal ink mass traced (cyan), 6 enclosed voids at true size in their grid cells (amber), the main gesture from start to end (red). Of 16 edge segments, 56% crisp, 25% soft or bloomed, 19% broken. The rating these readings produce, the rules applied and the arithmetic, with Peter's own rating where he gave one, are in [the Archive record](https://peteryuill.art/archive/works/T_127). ## Date 2026.03.22, day 84 of the Crucible Year, one of 7 paintings from that date (5 shown). 51 works were registered in the fourteen days before. Paintings are dated by the day their batch was registered and photographed; each was finished that day or within the few days before. Phase: [P1 Warm-up](https://peteryuill.art/phases/P1) (working title). Made after one of the busiest fortnights of the previous two months: 51 works in the fourteen days before. THE YEAR ## T_127 among all 402 Every painting of the year by date; this one is outlined. [Every painting from 2026.03.22](https://peteryuill.art/days/2026-03-22) · [This date in the year](https://peteryuill.art/year?follow=2026-03-22) ## Materials - **Paper:** [Qing Yi Half-Raw Xuan](https://peteryuill.art/papers/S6), Jingxian Sichijian Xuan Paper Arts & Crafts Co., Ltd., made unknown - **Ink MB1:** [Kuretake Shogei Kiwami](https://peteryuill.art/inks/MB1), Kuretake - **Ink MB2:** [Yi De Ge Zhonghua](https://peteryuill.art/inks/MB2), Yi De Ge (Beijing) - **Ink MB3:** [Boku-Undo Bokkou](https://peteryuill.art/inks/MB3), Boku-Undo When each paper was in use [S1](https://peteryuill.art/papers/S1)[S2](https://peteryuill.art/papers/S2)[S3](https://peteryuill.art/papers/S3)[S4](https://peteryuill.art/papers/S4)[S5](https://peteryuill.art/papers/S5)[S6](https://peteryuill.art/papers/S6)[S7](https://peteryuill.art/papers/S7)[S8](https://peteryuill.art/papers/S8)[S9](https://peteryuill.art/papers/S9)[S10](https://peteryuill.art/papers/S10)[S11](https://peteryuill.art/papers/S11)[S12](https://peteryuill.art/papers/S12)[S13](https://peteryuill.art/papers/S13)[S14](https://peteryuill.art/papers/S14) Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct ## Related From the same date · 4 [Pattern V23 material and surface rung rose from 2026-05-24 on (rank-biserial +0.78, n 259)](https://peteryuill.art/oracle)[Pattern The floor of V23 Form rung raised in the later half of the practice (+2.30 SD, n 259)](https://peteryuill.art/oracle)[Pattern 45% of the variation in V23 Composition rung lies between batches (29 batches, n 259); with the month held constant 26%](https://peteryuill.art/oracle) [Previous T_119](https://peteryuill.art/works/T_119) [Back to all works](https://peteryuill.art/works) [Next T_128](https://peteryuill.art/works/T_128) ## Where next [T_128 same date, with 3 others](https://peteryuill.art/works/T_128)[2026.03.22 7 paintings on this date](https://peteryuill.art/days/2026-03-22)[Paper S6 every work on it](https://peteryuill.art/papers/S6)