--- title: "T_217, ink on paper | Crucible Year" url: https://peteryuill.art/works/T_217 description: "T_217 by Peter Yuill: A black block and a grey dome crowd the left of the sheet, facing one rising arc across a narrow gap of bare paper. Ink on Red Star Mo She Special Effect Xieyi Edition, half-raw (June 2025 batch), 97 × 180 cm, 2026.04.12. Crucible Year." source: generated from the Crucible Year master database --- ![Large black and grey ink masses fill the left of a wide white sheet; a separate grey-to-black arc rises on the right, with spatter above.] ![T_217, tone-stretched: what the model was shown] ![T_217: every pixel as the measuring code classes it] 97 × 180 cm · the whole sheet, uncropped # T_217 The engine's reading A black block and a grey dome crowd the left of the sheet, facing one rising arc across a narrow gap of bare paper. Record - **Date:** 2026.04.12 - **Dimensions:** 97 × 180 cm - **Rating:** [5.2](https://peteryuill.art/method#combined) - **Paper:** [Red Star Mo She Special Effect Xieyi Edition, half-raw (June 2025 batch)](https://peteryuill.art/papers/S12) - **Ink:** [Yi De Ge Refined Ink Juice](https://peteryuill.art/inks/MB4), [Boku-Undo Genso](https://peteryuill.art/inks/MB5), [Yi De Ge Yun Tou Yan](https://peteryuill.art/inks/MB6) [Enquire about T_217](https://peteryuill.art/enquiries?work=T_217) Availability, price or a studio visit. Peter replies himself; asking commits you to nothing. In the old version the giant had wings too. He sold them, the way giants do, for weight: to be the heaviest thing in the valley, never to be moved. The bargain held. He sits on the bottom edge of the world and he cannot be moved, even by himself. Somebody crossed his back in the night, leaving prints going right, toward the one who kept her wing. She is still lifting it, slowly, the frayed tips catching light. I like the giant anyway. He paid in full. He just never read the small print, which in these stories is always written in feathers, and always on the other side of the river. 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_217#details)[The reading](https://peteryuill.art/works/T_217#reading)[The rating](https://peteryuill.art/works/T_217#rating)[How it was measured](https://peteryuill.art/works/T_217#read)[Date](https://peteryuill.art/works/T_217#date)[Materials](https://peteryuill.art/works/T_217#materials)[Related](https://peteryuill.art/works/T_217#related) The engine's reading ## The reading Written by the engine after V23's reads, from the settled findings, and checked by hand before approval. It explains V23's numbers and may not change them. - **Structure:** left black block fused into grey dome; separate arc on right across gap - **Movement:** left to right along drop trail and spatter; right arc lifts against it - **Coverage:** ink on about three quarters of the paper - **Tone:** four tonal steps, weighted dark - **Layering:** grey sweeps, black passes, spatter; readable at right arc, merged at left - **Edges:** crisp feathered top of right arc; soft, bleeding edges around left block - **Feibai:** present at the feathered upper edge of the right arc - **Open paper:** thin strip along the top, narrow vertical gap between the masses - **Chance marks:** spatter and drips top left and top right; creases across left black; blooms lower left - **Frame:** ink runs off left and bottom edges; top and right stay open Two masses face each other across a narrow strip of bare paper. On the left, a black block fills the sheet to its edge and swells into a grey dome. On the right, one arc climbs and leans back toward it. Spatter and a trail of dark drops carry the eye across. The arc is the sheet's real achievement. It rises from grey sweeps into a black base, and the grey stays readable under the black because the half-sized paper holds each pass where it lands. At the top the brush ran fast and dry, and the hairs parted into parallel white streaks that keep the curve to the end. The left is where the sheet pays. The block has no travel in it. Its inside is dense and nearly flat, creases cross the black, and where it meets the dome the passes have fused into a cloudy, milky grey. Both masses sit down hard on the bottom edge. That leaves a sheet with one good passage and a lot of weight around it. The arc is worth the walk across the room. The rest is mostly ballast. Read and measured ## The rating THE RATING ## T_217, rated 5.2 The combined score, out of 10: V23's reading of the photograph as the read half and V24's twelve tests on the 16-bit file as the measured half, added and divided by 10. The scale is relative to this archive. How each half is made is on the Method page. READ HALF 21.0 V23's rating, 4.2, × 5 + MEASURED HALF 31.0 twelve tests, of 50 → RATING 5.2 52.0 ÷ 10 THE READ HALF, V23 - **Form:** 1.0 · blunt - **Tonal depth:** 2.0 · modelled - **Layering:** 2.0 · legible - **Composition:** 2.0 · working - **Material and surface:** 1.0 · flawed THE MEASURED HALF, V24 - **Mass:** 3.4 of 10 - **Tone:** 10.8 of 14 - **Void:** 8.0 of 8 - **Flow:** 4.0 of 10 - **Balance:** 4.8 of 8 Measured ## How it was measured FROM THE 16-BIT FILE ## What V24 measured. Plain physical facts with no model involved. Across the year they track how the practice changes. On one sheet they cannot say whether a mark is any good. Millimetres read a few percent high, because the photographs are cropped just inside the paper's edge. MASS WIDTH 78 mm The width of the ink mask along its medial axis. DEPTH OF THE DARKS 1.64 Optical density at the 75th percentile of the sheet. LARGEST VOID 135 mm The radius of the largest circle of open paper. DIRECTIONS 0.37 How far the marks align across the sheet. Lower means they run several ways. BALANCE 0.64 Left and right asymmetry of the ink. Lower is more even. THE FILE 4.02 Pixels to the millimetre in the TIFF these were measured from, with the studio light removed. 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_217] ![T_217, tone-stretched] ![T_217, classed by brightness] 76% 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: 0.067 (under 0.045 reads as flat). FIVE READS ## Five reads, one answer. Each quality placed on its ladder by each read, and the mean the engine keeps. READ 1 READ 2 READ 3 READ 4 READ 5 MEAN Form 1 BLUNT 1 BLUNT 1 BLUNT 1 BLUNT 1 BLUNT 1.0 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 1 FLAWED 1 FLAWED 1 FLAWED 1 FLAWED 1.0 ### READ 1, IN ITS OWN WORDS “An energetic sheet close to R2. The right arc has some fluency, but the left mass is a bulky, cloudy slab. Creases and a milky wash mark the surface, and the left two-thirds is crowded.” Form · BLUNT Left black mass is a broad block with ragged walls. The central grey wash is a cloudy fan. Only the right arc's sweep follows the brush's travel. WEAKEST Left dark mass: bulky, dissolved slab with no stroke travel STRONGEST Right arc with dry-brush feathered upper edge Tonal depth · MODELLED Modulation 0.067 and four tonal steps. The central and right arcs show streaking and graded grey. The left black block and the lower right black are mostly dense. WEAKEST Lower right black mass, dense and flat inside STRONGEST Central grey fan with streaks and dot rows Layering · LEGIBLE The grey fan passes over and under the black masses and stays mostly readable. In the left half, dark and grey passes blur together, so the order is hard to read. WEAKEST Left mass, where black and grey passes merge cloudily STRONGEST Right arc: grey sweep under the black base Composition · WORKING The large left mass and the right arc frame a pale gap, and spatter carries the eye upward. The left two-thirds is heavy and jammed to the bottom edge. WEAKEST Left half crowded; ink covers 76% of the sheet STRONGEST Gap between the two masses with rising right arc Material and surface · FLAWED Creases cross the left black mass, and the grey wash around the dark is cloudy and blotchy. The bottom centre has a vertical drip line and blotchy beads. WEAKEST Cloudy, milky grey wash across the centre-left STRONGEST Dry-brush feathering at the top of the right arc FLAWS ## 5 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 5 distinct places, 16 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: 2 principal ink masses traced (cyan), 4 enclosed voids at true size in their grid cells (amber), the main gesture from start to end (red). Of 19 edge segments, 32% crisp, 32% soft or bloomed, 37% broken. V23's rules and arithmetic, and every figure under its own name, are in [the Archive record](https://peteryuill.art/archive/works/T_217). ## Date 2026.04.12, day 105 of the Crucible Year, one of 13 paintings from that date (2 shown). 45 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: [P2 The Switch](https://peteryuill.art/phases/P2) (working title). THE YEAR ## T_217 among all 419 Every painting of the year by date; this one is outlined. [Every painting from 2026.04.12](https://peteryuill.art/days/2026-04-12) · [This date in the year](https://peteryuill.art/year?follow=2026-04-12) ## Materials - **Paper:** [Red Star Mo She Special Effect Xieyi Edition, half-raw (June 2025 batch)](https://peteryuill.art/papers/S12), China Xuan Paper Co., Ltd., made 2025.06.07 - **Ink MB4:** [Yi De Ge Refined Ink Juice](https://peteryuill.art/inks/MB4), Yi De Ge (Beijing) - **Ink MB5:** [Boku-Undo Genso](https://peteryuill.art/inks/MB5), Boku-Undo - **Ink MB6:** [Yi De Ge Yun Tou Yan](https://peteryuill.art/inks/MB6), Yi De Ge (Beijing) The sheet of paper was made 309 days before this painting. 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 · 1 Same paper and inks, other dates · 8 [Across the year The combined score rises over the year, and the trend holds with the paper held constant.](https://peteryuill.art/oracle)[Across the year The measured half stepped up from 2026.06.03. T_217 is dated before that.](https://peteryuill.art/oracle) [Previous T_208](https://peteryuill.art/works/T_208) [Back to all works](https://peteryuill.art/works) [Next T_230](https://peteryuill.art/works/T_230) ## Where next [T_208 same date, with 0 others](https://peteryuill.art/works/T_208)[T_230 the next shown painting in the sequence](https://peteryuill.art/works/T_230)[T_276 same paper and inks, 2026.05.07](https://peteryuill.art/works/T_276)[2026.04.12 13 paintings on this date](https://peteryuill.art/days/2026-04-12)[Paper S12 every work on it](https://peteryuill.art/papers/S12)