--- title: "T_409, ink on paper | Crucible Year" url: https://peteryuill.art/works/T_409 description: "T_409 by Peter Yuill: Segments of black arc wheel around a white opening, with a dark fan to the right and red seeping from under a hook. Ink on Red Star Mo She Imitation Antique Chu Bark, Exhibition Edition, half-raw, 97 × 180 cm, 2026.10.29. Crucible Year." source: generated from the Crucible Year master database --- ![Black arc segments curve around an off-centre white opening, with a dark wedge at right, a small block, grey slab below, and red patches.] ![T_409, tone-stretched: what the model was shown] ![T_409: every pixel as the measuring code classes it] 97 × 180 cm · the whole sheet, uncropped # T_409 The engine's reading Segments of black arc wheel around a white opening, with a dark fan to the right and red seeping from under a hook. Record - **Date:** 2026.10.29 - **Dimensions:** 97 × 180 cm - **Rating:** [6.1](https://peteryuill.art/method#combined) - **Paper:** [Red Star Mo She Imitation Antique Chu Bark, Exhibition Edition, half-raw](https://peteryuill.art/papers/S10) - **Ink:** [Yi De Ge Yun Tou Yan](https://peteryuill.art/inks/MB6), [Boku-Undo Gentoku Super Concentrated](https://peteryuill.art/inks/MB8), [Yi De Ge Pine Soot Ink](https://peteryuill.art/inks/MB9), [Shisan Yue Calligraphy and Painting Ink](https://peteryuill.art/inks/MB10), colour inks [Enquire about T_409](https://peteryuill.art/enquiries?work=T_409) Availability, price or a studio visit. Peter replies himself; asking commits you to nothing. I was at the wedding under the hill. You know the rules: the door opens, the fiddles start, and the dancers turn in a ring around the light until their shoes wear through. Don't eat. Don't drink. Whatever you do, don't stop to rest. That black block standing out at the right is the guest who stepped from the ring and thought he had got away cheap. He has. He also hasn't. Behind him his village has gone to grass, his wife is a name on a stone, and the red is still coming up through his socks. I told him to go back in. He looked at the door, then at his feet, and stood there in the wet field, holding his hat. 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_409#details)[The reading](https://peteryuill.art/works/T_409#reading)[The rating](https://peteryuill.art/works/T_409#rating)[How it was measured](https://peteryuill.art/works/T_409#read)[Date](https://peteryuill.art/works/T_409#date)[Materials](https://peteryuill.art/works/T_409#materials)[Related](https://peteryuill.art/works/T_409#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:** concentric arc segments around white opening; fan wedge right; detached block; grey slab below - **Movement:** rotation around the white centre; lower-right slab lies against it - **Coverage:** ink on about nine tenths of the paper - **Tone:** two tonal steps, weighted dark - **Layering:** three: grey bands, black arcs, red; readable at rims, inner ring, lost in upper darks - **Edges:** crisp on arc walls and hook; dry, broken at arc ends; soft in outer grey - **Feibai:** none - **Open paper:** irregular white opening, off-centre, ringed by arcs; smaller open ground at upper right - **Colour:** dull red under the hook's tip, at far right, and feathered at lower centre - **Chance marks:** water staining in lower-right slab; bleed and tide-edged blot below centre; spatter upper right - **Frame:** ink runs off top and bottom; left and right mostly open, upper right clear A black wheel turns around a hole of white paper. The arcs rise from low on the left, pass over the top and come down on the right in a great fan, and a short black hook curls back across the opening. The eye goes round before it has time to choose. The hook is the finest thing here. Its inner wall bites a clean curve out of the white, and its tip stops hard where red seeps from beneath. Half-raw paper keeps an edge like this and keeps layers apart: at the left, translucent grey collars step out from under the black, their order still legible. That reading stops at the upper right, where heavy coats close the fan into nearly flat black. Below it, the grey slab goes cloudy and mottled, a blunt weight that stalls the rotation. Red runs into grey under the hook and turns to mud, an accident. The turning idea and the firm left side meet a right side that fills where it should travel. A solid, middling painting, worth crossing the room for the hook and not much more. Read and measured ## The rating THE RATING ## T_409, rated 6.1 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 39.8 twelve tests, of 50 → RATING 6.1 60.8 ÷ 10 THE READ HALF, V23 - **Form:** 2.0 · built - **Tonal depth:** 1.0 · thin - **Layering:** 2.0 · legible - **Composition:** 2.0 · working - **Material and surface:** 1.0 · flawed THE MEASURED HALF, V24 - **Mass:** 10.0 of 10 - **Tone:** 7.8 of 14 - **Void:** 6.4 of 8 - **Flow:** 9.2 of 10 - **Balance:** 6.4 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 227 mm The width of the ink mask along its medial axis. DEPTH OF THE DARKS 1.77 Optical density at the 75th percentile of the sheet. LARGEST VOID 132 mm The radius of the largest circle of open paper. DIRECTIONS 0.08 How far the marks align across the sheet. Lower means they run several ways. BALANCE 0.49 Left and right asymmetry of the ink. Lower is more even. THE FILE 3.93 Pixels to the millimetre in the TIFF these were measured from, with the studio light removed. Read by the Visual Analysis Engine, version 23.13, on 2026.11.02: measured by code, then read 10 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_409] ![T_409, tone-stretched] ![T_409, classed by brightness] 86% of the sheet carries ink TONAL STEPS ## 2 families of tone. Every inked pixel's brightness in 64 bins, smoothed; each circled peak holds at least 4% of the ink. Two or fewer: Tonal depth is held at the bottom rung whatever the model reads. A dense sheet of many translucent passes can count low here, so Layering is left to the reads. Life inside the black: 0.055 (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 10 READ 2 READ 3 READ 4 READ 5 READ 6 READ 7 READ 8 READ 9 MEAN Form 2 BUILT 2 BUILT 2 BUILT 2 BUILT 2 BUILT 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 MODELLED 2 MODELLED 2 MODELLED 2 MODELLED 2 MODELLED 2.0 Layering 2 LEGIBLE 2 LEGIBLE 2 LEGIBLE 2 LEGIBLE 2 LEGIBLE 2 LEGIBLE 2 LEGIBLE 2 LEGIBLE 2 LEGIBLE 2 LEGIBLE 2.0 Composition 2 WORKING 2 WORKING 2 WORKING 2 WORKING 2 WORKING 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 FLAWED 1 FLAWED 1 FLAWED 1 FLAWED 1 FLAWED 1.0 ### READ 1, IN ITS OWN WORDS “A strong arc structure around a white opening, but heavy, near-flat blacks bury much layering. The bulky right wedge and cloudy lower-right slab keep it ordinary, well short of R3 despite the similar motif.” Form · BUILT Concentric arc segments hold their walls and follow a sweeping stroke, but the large right wedge and lower-right slab are bulky, filled rather than drawn. WEAKEST Bulky dark wedge at right; rough grey slab lower right STRONGEST Inner black arc curling around the white centre Tonal depth · MODELLED Modulation is barely above flat. Stretched view shows stepped density in arcs and grey bands at the outer rim, but the right wedge stays near-uniform black. WEAKEST Right wedge reads almost flat black in colour view STRONGEST Stepped grey halo rings around the left arc Layering · LEGIBLE Grey underpasses and black arcs read at the rims and the inner ring; across the upper and right darks, heavy later passes largely cover earlier ones. WEAKEST Upper and right darks merge; overlaps nearly lost in colour STRONGEST Translucent grey rim passes beneath the black arcs Composition · WORKING Great arc carries the eye around a shaped white opening, with the right tab extending it; heavy dark coverage crowds the sheet and the lower-right slab is weak. WEAKEST Murky lower-right slab sits heavily against the arc STRONGEST Spiral sweep around the bright white central opening Material and surface · FLAWED Black arcs are controlled, but the lower-right principal grey mass is cloudy and blotchy at viewing distance, with colour and grey fusing murkily at bottom centre. WEAKEST Cloudy mottled grey wash in the lower-right slab STRONGEST Dry-brushed edges on arc ends and outer rim FLAWS ## 6 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 6 distinct places, 36 mentions in all across 10 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. V23's rules and arithmetic, and every figure under its own name, are in [the Archive record](https://peteryuill.art/archive/works/T_409). ## Date 2026.10.29, day 305 of the Crucible Year, one of 6 paintings from that date. 19 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: [P4 S14](https://peteryuill.art/phases/P4) (working title). Every painting from 2026.10.29 is on this site. 5 other dates with more than five works are shown in full. THE YEAR ## T_409 among all 419 Every painting of the year by date; this one is outlined. [Every painting from 2026.10.29](https://peteryuill.art/days/2026-10-29) · [This date in the year](https://peteryuill.art/year?follow=2026-10-29) ## 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 MB6:** [Yi De Ge Yun Tou Yan](https://peteryuill.art/inks/MB6), Yi De Ge (Beijing) - **Ink MB8:** [Boku-Undo Gentoku Super Concentrated](https://peteryuill.art/inks/MB8), Boku-Undo - **Ink MB9:** [Yi De Ge Pine Soot Ink](https://peteryuill.art/inks/MB9), Yi De Ge (Beijing) - **Ink MB10:** [Shisan Yue Calligraphy and Painting Ink](https://peteryuill.art/inks/MB10), Shisan Yue (Thirteenth Month) - **Colour:** colour inks, recorded together The last painting on S10 so far, after 46 others. 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 · 5 [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_409 is dated after that.](https://peteryuill.art/oracle) [Previous T_408](https://peteryuill.art/works/T_408) [Back to all works](https://peteryuill.art/works) ## Where next [T_404 same date, with 4 others](https://peteryuill.art/works/T_404)[2026.10.29 6 paintings on this date](https://peteryuill.art/days/2026-10-29)[Paper S10 every work on it](https://peteryuill.art/papers/S10)