T_189
The engine's readingA broad grey arc of dry brush rolls over the paper into a black hook, with a pale band climbing beneath toward the right edge.
Record- Date
- 2026.04.08
- Dimensions
- 97 × 180 cm
- Paper
- Red Star Mo She Special Effect Xieyi Edition, raw
- Ink
- Kuretake Shogei Kiwami, Yi De Ge Zhonghua, Boku-Undo Bokkou
The arc is exactly the length of an arm. I measured mine against it. It is the swipe my grandmother made across the fogged kitchen window with the heel of her hand, the whole radius of her shoulder, so I could see the yard. Streaks where the skin dragged. Clear glass where it lifted. Then I pressed my face into the middle of her clean place and left a dark, damp lump of a print, nose and breath and mouth, no detail in it at all, because I was too close to have any. She did not wipe it off. She let it fog back slowly, from the edges in, over the yard and the washing line.
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
- great grey arc, black hook at centre, grey diagonal band below right
- Movement
- clockwise sweep from lower left over the top; band climbs rightward across it
- Coverage
- ink on about two thirds of the paper
- Tone
- three tonal steps, weighted to the middle greys
- Layering
- grey arc and band first, black hook over; readable where hook crosses arc
- Edges
- crisp striated rim on the arc; soft lobed hook edges; ragged band end
- Feibai
- present in the arc's upper right, where hairs part through the turn
- Open paper
- rounded white bay under the hook at bottom centre; top-right corner
- Chance marks
- pale-ringed drops below arc base; black spatter top right; crease lines through arc
- Frame
- band reaches right edge and bottom edge; arc grazes top; left edge open
A grey arc as wide as a broom rises from the lower left, rolls over the top of the paper and comes round into a black hook at the centre. A paler band climbs from below toward the right edge. The eye travels the whole circuit, then settles in the white bay under the hook.
The arc is the reason to stand here. Raw bark paper grips a dry brush hard and keeps every hair, so the stroke becomes a record of its own travel: dark stripes down the left flank, middle greys through the body, flying white at the upper right where the hairs part and the stroke turns. Where the hook crosses it, the grain still shows through.
The hook is the cost. Laid wet on paper that spreads fast, it swelled into lobes at its joins and dried to one even black, so the heaviest mark on the sheet is also the flattest. The band reads as an afterthought and crowds the lower corner. Ringed drops and crease lines in and below the arc are small, and the sheet takes them in.
A good painting, driven by one first-rate movement and held back by a centre that cannot match it.
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.
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.
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: 0.041 (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
“Strong sweeping dry-brush arc gives real movement and grain, but the central dark hook is bulky and flat inside, layering is two-pass, and small ringed drips sit below the arc.”
Arc's outline follows the stroke travel cleanly; central dark hook is a blunt, lobed fill with clumsy joins; lower-right wedge is serviceable but slab-like.
WEAKEST Central dark hook mass, bulky and lobed at joins
STRONGEST Great dry-brush arc following the brush's sweep
Arc shows banding and dry-brush grain; tone-stretched view shows the central dark mass flat inside; measured dark modulation 0.041 confirms flat darks.
WEAKEST Central dark hook interior uniform flat grey
STRONGEST Arc's streaked grain and banded dark stripes
Grey arc and wedge as first pass, dark hook and strokes laid over; overlaps read clearly but only two passes, not building depth.
WEAKEST Dark hook simply covers the grey arc
STRONGEST Grey arc under dark hook strokes remains readable
Large arc carries the eye from bottom left over the top into the hook and out the rightward wedge; open paper below the arc is shaped and active.
WEAKEST Lower-right wedge cut off, slightly heavy
STRONGEST Sweeping arc driving the eye into central hook
Dry-brush grain controlled in arc; small pale-ringed drips bottom left and fine crease cracks through arc are minor, away from main dark mass.
WEAKEST Pale-ringed drops and crease lines
STRONGEST Dry-brush bristle grain across the arc
4 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 4 distinct places, 12 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.
Measured from the 16-bit master.
The previous engine (V22) measured this sheet's master file: 1 principal ink mass traced (cyan), 7 enclosed voids at true size in their grid cells (amber), the main gesture from start to end (red). Of 15 edge segments, 27% crisp, 53% soft or bloomed, 20% 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.
Date
2026.04.08, day 101 of the Crucible Year, one of 22 paintings from that date (11 shown). 37 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 (working title).
T_189 among all 402
Every painting of the year by date; this one is outlined.
Materials
- Paper
- Red Star Mo She Special Effect Xieyi Edition, raw, China Xuan Paper Co., Ltd., made 2025.12.08
- Ink MB1
- Kuretake Shogei Kiwami, Kuretake
- Ink MB2
- Yi De Ge Zhonghua, Yi De Ge (Beijing)
- Ink MB3
- Boku-Undo Bokkou, Boku-Undo
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