T_302
The engine's readingA grey crescent of ink swings across a long sheet of raw paper toward the top right, checked at the left by a black slab and blunt verticals.
Record- Date
- 2026.05.14
- Dimensions
- 70 × 180 cm
- Paper
- Tanxi Thickened Grade A Special Jing Pi Small 6-Foot (raw)
- Ink
- Yi De Ge Refined Ink Juice, Boku-Undo Genso, Yi De Ge Yun Tou Yan
The black lump at the upper left is the dog, and he has just understood what the bath is for. The two upright strokes beside him are the taps. Everything else is the long grey curve of the tub filling, and the spatter is what happens when a dog that size decides to shake halfway through. I have been on the bathroom floor for that: towels everywhere, sleeves soaked to the elbow, someone laughing too hard to help. The dog stands in the grey water with the look of a man wronged in court. Afterwards he runs the whole house wet, rubbing himself along the hall carpet, and the empty tub keeps a long grey tide line, curved like a smile.
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
- broad grey crescent, black slab and verticals at left, small black wedge top centre
- Movement
- crescent sweeps down from left and up to top right; left blocks stand against it
- Coverage
- ink on about two thirds of the paper
- Tone
- six tonal steps, weighted to the middle greys
- Layering
- pale wash, darker grey belly, black accents; readable along the lower arc
- Edges
- crisp on black slab and wedge; soft along arc's upper rim; broken at right
- Feibai
- present along the right-hand curve of the arc, rising toward the top right
- Open paper
- rounded bowl from top centre to top right, held inside the arc
- Chance marks
- small rings at slab and arc junction; blooms and cloudy patch above arc start; spatter lower left
- Frame
- grey runs off left, right and lower right edges; top and lower left stay open
A grey crescent swings from the middle of the sheet down along the bottom and up to the top right, and the eye rides it the whole way. At the left end it runs into a black slab and a stack of black verticals, and the movement stops there.
The crescent is where the sheet is strongest. A pale wash went down first, then a darker grey belly along the lower curve. The raw paper took each pass fast and kept them apart, so the order still reads. On the right the brush ran drier, and the hairs split into long parallel streaks of bare paper that hold the curve's line to its tip. The arc also gives the paper inside it a clear shape: an open bowl.
The left third pays for it. The slab is square-ended and heavy, so dense it seals the paper, and flat inside apart from one paler lobe low down. The verticals beside it are blunt, and the corner below fills with loose drops. Small rings and a cloudy patch gather where slab meets arc; the sheet absorbs them.
So the sheet is half made. One good passage, one stubborn mass, no settled picture: a typical day in the studio.
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.
6 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: 0.057 (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 good sweeping grey arc with real texture, held back by a bulky, flat black mass at the top left, crowded blocks along the left edge, and small rings and blooms where the mass meets the arc. Ordinary overall, close to R2.”
Large arc right/centre reads as one travelled stroke with dry-brush tail; top-left black mass is bulky, left vertical blocks blunt and stiff.
WEAKEST Bulky slab-like dark mass at top left
STRONGEST Sweeping grey arc following the brush travel
Arc interior shows mottled grain, banding and graded greys; six tonal steps. Top-left black mass mostly uniform except a lighter lower lobe.
WEAKEST Top-left black mass largely flat inside
STRONGEST Grey arc with grain, mottling and stepped density
Pale wide arc, darker inner grey band and black accents read as distinct passes; at left the black simply covers earlier grey.
WEAKEST Black mass covers greys beneath at left
STRONGEST Translucent grey arc passes overlapping legibly
Arc sweeps from dark top-left down and up to top right, shaping open upper paper; left edge clustered and crowded, lower left scattered splashes.
WEAKEST Crowded left edge with blocky verticals
STRONGEST Large arc carrying eye left to upper right
Small rings/blooms at centre-left where dark mass meets arc, visible in colour view; mottled tide edges in arc start. Dry-brush right side well handled.
WEAKEST Rings and blooms beside the dark mass
STRONGEST Dry-brush streaking in the right arc
3 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 3 distinct places, 14 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.
Measured from the 16-bit master.
The previous engine (V22) measured this sheet's master file: 6 principal ink masses traced (cyan), 7 enclosed voids at true size in their grid cells (amber), the main gesture from start to end (red). Of 23 edge segments, 39% crisp, 26% soft or bloomed, 35% 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
2026.05.14, day 137 of the Crucible Year, one of 9 paintings from that date (6 shown). 28 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_302 among all 402
Every painting of the year by date; this one is outlined.
Materials
- Paper
- Tanxi Thickened Grade A Special Jing Pi Small 6-Foot (raw), Anhui Jingxian Tanxi Xuan Paper Art Products Co., Ltd., made 2015.11.19
- 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)
Related
