T_290
The engine's readingA broad grey and black arc rolls over the top of the paper and breaks into a ragged tail at the right, holding an oval of bare paper.
Record- Date
- 2026.05.07
- Dimensions
- 97 × 180 cm
- Paper
- Red Star Mo She Special Effect Xieyi Edition, half-raw (June 2025 batch)
- Ink
- Yi De Ge Refined Ink Juice, Boku-Undo Genso, Yi De Ge Yun Tou Yan, colour inks
The creature sleeps curled round a nest with nothing in it, which in its country is the most valuable thing a nest can hold. Its hide is creased like a riverbed in a drought, every fold a stream gone back to grass. Near the end of it the masons got involved. Someone decided the tail should finish in stairs, cut square, grey stone, very sensible, and the creature allowed it the way old kings allow a new tax. Now its tail ends in a landing. On cold nights travellers climb up and sit there, three steps from the dark, warming their hands on its breath.
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
- one broad arc around an open oval; inner end in stepped blocks
- Movement
- clockwise sweep from lower left over the top; a dry-brush stroke crosses inside
- Coverage
- ink on about three quarters of the paper
- Tone
- three tonal steps, spread across the range
- Layering
- pale, mid-grey and dark passes; readable at left and lower edges
- Edges
- crisp arc walls; broken dry-brush at the right tail and crossing stroke
- Feibai
- crossing stroke at the oval's upper edge; dark tail at right
- Open paper
- tilted white oval at centre; bare paper at right and lower right
- Colour
- blue spatter near the right edge; one small blue mark at lower left
- Chance marks
- fold line and wrinkles through top dark band; small brownish stain lower centre
- Frame
- runs off left and bottom left, touches top centre; right edge open
One arc drives the sheet. It rises from the bottom left, rolls over the top and breaks at the right into a ragged black tail. Inside it sits a tilted oval of white paper.
The left side of the sweep is the more convincing. Pale, mid-grey and darker passes lie in bands there. The half-sized bark paper grips the dry brush and keeps each bristle track as a fine streak. The greys grade, and every layer reads.
The cost sits at the inner end, where the arc stops in stepped grey blocks at centre right, filled rather than drawn. Across the top the dark band is one even slab that seals the greys beneath it. Creases from the crumpled paper cut through it. The arc also crowds the left edge, and the few blue drops at the right are too sparse to hold the empty paper there.
That leaves a solid, sound sheet. The movement is true and the oval is earned. The ending and the flat black keep it below the year's best.
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
“A fluent large arc with a shaped open centre, but the dark band is flat inside, the passes are few, the terminations are blocky and creases run through the mass. It is an ordinary, working sheet near R2.”
Large enso-like arc holds its walls and follows the stroke; the stepped dark/grey terminations near centre-right read stiff and filled in rather than drawn.
WEAKEST Stepped blunt grey block ending the inner arc, lower right
STRONGEST Sweeping outer arc following brush travel left side
Outer grey bands carry streaks and graded arcs; the main dark band is measured flat (0.041) and reads as an even slab across the top.
WEAKEST Dark inner band interior, top centre, nearly uniform
STRONGEST Outer grey band with streaked dry-brush arcs, left
Outer pale pass, darker inner band, a dry-brush crossing stroke and a dark block at right remain readable; ordering is limited to about three passes.
WEAKEST Dark band partly covers earlier grey passes
STRONGEST Dry-brush grey stroke crossing the open centre
The arc carries the eye round to the dark right terminus and shapes the central void; the lower-right quarter is weak and loosely occupied.
WEAKEST Bottom-right paper feels leftover beside spatters
STRONGEST Circular sweep framing the open white centre
Ink controlled with good dry-brush grain at left; wrinkles and a fold line at top centre crease through the dark mass; blue spatters are deliberate colour.
WEAKEST Paper creases cutting across the dark band
STRONGEST Dry-brush streaking in outer grey band
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, 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.
Measured from the 16-bit master.
The previous engine (V22) measured this sheet's master file: 3 principal ink masses traced (cyan), 5 enclosed voids at true size in their grid cells (amber), the main gesture from start to end (red). Of 21 edge segments, 43% crisp, 33% soft or bloomed, 24% 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
2026.05.07, day 130 of the Crucible Year, one of 19 paintings from that date (14 shown). 16 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 (working title).
T_290 among all 402
Every painting of the year by date; this one is outlined.
Materials
- Paper
- Red Star Mo She Special Effect Xieyi Edition, half-raw (June 2025 batch), China Xuan Paper Co., Ltd., made 2025.06.07
- Ink MB4
- Yi De Ge Refined Ink Juice, Yi De Ge (Beijing)
- Ink MB5
- Boku-Undo Genso, Boku-Undo
- Ink MB6
- Yi De Ge Yun Tou Yan, Yi De Ge (Beijing)
- Colour
- colour inks, recorded together
Related