--- title: "T_318, sumi ink on paper | Crucible Year" url: https://peteryuill.art/works/T_318 description: "T_318 by Peter Yuill: A great black arc wheels over a held circle of bare paper, fanned with stepped grey at upper left and crossed by one red stroke. Sumi ink on Red Star Mo She Imitation Antique Chu Bark, Exhibition Edition, half-raw, 97 × 180 cm, 2026.05.24. Crucible Year." source: generated from the Crucible Year master database --- ![A huge black arc with grey outer bands curves from lower left to bottom right around a white circle; red stroke at upper right.] ![T_318, tone-stretched: what the model was shown] ![T_318: every pixel as the measuring code classes it] 97 × 180 cm · the whole sheet, uncropped # T_318 The engine's reading A great black arc wheels over a held circle of bare paper, fanned with stepped grey at upper left and crossed by one red stroke. Record - **Date:** 2026.05.24 - **Dimensions:** 97 × 180 cm - **Paper:** [Red Star Mo She Imitation Antique Chu Bark, Exhibition Edition, half-raw](https://peteryuill.art/papers/S10) - **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), colour inks [Enquire about T_318](https://peteryuill.art/enquiries?work=T_318) Availability, price or a studio visit. Peter replies himself; asking commits you to nothing. Three red drops below the heavy black end, and I am in a kitchen at two in the morning. Someone has cut a thumb on the good knife, the one we said we would sharpen. The other one comes in barefoot, half asleep, and holds the hand under the tap without asking how it happened. I stand by the fridge and keep quiet. The kettle goes on, because the kettle always goes on. The loaf stays half cut on the board, a pale round face turned up at the ceiling. They lean on the counter, shoulder to shoulder, watching the water run pink and then clear, and the plaster goes on crooked, and neither of them straightens it. 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_318#details)[The reading](https://peteryuill.art/works/T_318#reading)[How it was read](https://peteryuill.art/works/T_318#read)[Date](https://peteryuill.art/works/T_318#date)[Materials](https://peteryuill.art/works/T_318#materials)[Related](https://peteryuill.art/works/T_318#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:** one great arc wrapping an open circle, grey fan bands behind it - **Movement:** rises at lower left, over the top, down off bottom right; red arc descends across it - **Coverage:** ink on about three quarters of the paper - **Tone:** six tonal steps, weighted dark - **Layering:** translucent grey passes, black arc, red pass; readable at upper left and top - **Edges:** crisp on the arc's inner wall and grey steps; ragged at lower-left end - **Feibai:** present in the outer grey bands, upper left and upper right - **Open paper:** round void, lower centre right, cut by bottom edge; top-left corner - **Colour:** red arc at upper right; red drops and pink ring at lower left - **Chance marks:** grey smudges at left edge; tide shape at top centre; cloudy patches inside black - **Frame:** runs off top, right and bottom right; left edge and top-left corner open One great arc rises from the lower left, rolls across the top and drops off the bottom right, and the eye rides it the whole way. Inside, a round of bare paper is held open and cut by the bottom edge, so the turn never closes. The finest passage is the grey fan at upper left. Translucent bands step outward, each pass legible through the next, because the half-sized paper keeps their edges crisp and lets layers stack without sinking into one another. Dry-brush streaks run with the sweep, and a red arc at upper right lies cleanly over the grey. The trouble is where the arc begins. At the lower left it breaks into stacked, slab-like wedges and a ragged black block, and the motion stalls. The black is dense enough to seal the paper: its descending left half reads as flat surface and hides the passes beneath. A hard-edged tide shape at the top centre and cloudy patches in the black at upper right are small. The sweep and its held circle are fully resolved, and they outweigh a clumsy start. A painting of real force, faulted at one corner. 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_318] ![T_318, tone-stretched] ![T_318, classed by brightness] 72% of the sheet carries ink TONAL STEPS ## 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: 0.062 (under 0.045 reads as flat). FIVE READS ## Five reads, agreeing on 3 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 3 ORDERED 2 LEGIBLE 3 ORDERED 3 ORDERED 2 LEGIBLE 2.6 Composition 2 WORKING 2 WORKING 2 WORKING 3 COMMANDING 2 WORKING 2.2 Material and surface 2 SOUND 2 SOUND 2 SOUND 2 SOUND 2 SOUND 2.0 ### READ 1, IN ITS OWN WORDS “A large arc sheet in R3's family. It has clear translucent layering and a well-shaped white void, but the bottom-left terminal is blunt and the black mass reads flatter than R3's. Overall it is a solid, ordinary sheet.” Form · BUILT The main arc holds and follows the brush's travel to the bottom right. At the bottom left the arc ends in clumsy, slab-like wedges with awkward joins. WEAKEST Blunt stacked block terminals at bottom-left of arc STRONGEST Main black arc sweeping to bottom right Tonal depth · MODELLED The outer grey bands step and grade well. The tone-stretched view shows mottling and banding inside the dark arc, but at viewing distance its left portion reads as fairly uniform black. WEAKEST Black arc's left half reads flat in colour STRONGEST Graded translucent outer bands at upper left Layering · ORDERED Several translucent grey passes overlap in a readable order on the left and top. The red arc pass sits legibly over the grey at upper right. WEAKEST Dark arc covers underlying passes rather than reading through STRONGEST Stepped translucent bands overlapping at upper left Composition · WORKING The big arc carries the eye from bottom left over the top and down to the right, and frames a shaped white void. The bottom-left end is jammed, and the top-edge form is cramped. WEAKEST Crowded broken terminal at bottom left STRONGEST Empty circular interior framed by the arc Material and surface · SOUND The ink is controlled. Blotchy patches inside the black arc show mainly in the tone-stretched view. Faint grey marks on the left paper are small. The red drops are deliberate colour. WEAKEST Cloudy mottling inside the dark arc STRONGEST Dry-brush streaks in the outer grey bands FLAWS ## 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. GEOMETRY ## Measured from the 16-bit master. The previous engine (V22) measured this sheet's master file: 3 principal ink masses traced (cyan), 1 enclosed void at true size in its grid cells (amber), the main gesture from start to end (red). Of 20 edge segments, 25% crisp, 70% soft or bloomed, 5% 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_318). ## Date 2026.05.24, day 147 of the Crucible Year, one of 10 paintings from that date (9 shown). 15 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: [P3 The Floor Rises](https://peteryuill.art/phases/P3) (working title). Made after a calmer fortnight than 15 of the 15 dates before it. THE YEAR ## T_318 among all 402 Every painting of the year by date; this one is outlined. [Every painting from 2026.05.24](https://peteryuill.art/days/2026-05-24) · [This date in the year](https://peteryuill.art/year?follow=2026-05-24) ## Materials - **Paper:** [Red Star Mo She Imitation Antique Chu Bark, Exhibition Edition, half-raw](https://peteryuill.art/papers/S10), China Xuan Paper Co., Ltd. (中国宣纸股份有限公司), made 2026.01.14 - **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) - **Colour:** colour inks, recorded together The sheet of paper was made 130 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 · 8 [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_317](https://peteryuill.art/works/T_317) [Back to all works](https://peteryuill.art/works) [Next T_320](https://peteryuill.art/works/T_320) ## Where next [T_310 same date, with 7 others](https://peteryuill.art/works/T_310)[T_320 the next shown painting in the sequence](https://peteryuill.art/works/T_320)[2026.05.24 10 paintings on this date](https://peteryuill.art/days/2026-05-24)[Paper S10 every work on it](https://peteryuill.art/papers/S10)