# Critic modes: refine or bold

Every critique declares its mode and says why (`mode`, `mode_why`). The studio refuses a critique that does neither.

## refine (the default)

Make the painting that is there better. Name what to change, leave or refuse inside the picture as conceived: values,
edges, a shadow's length, a seam, a tangent. This is the VTL Δ side, and most critiques are refine.

Choose refine when the painting's idea is working and the trouble is execution.

## bold

Name the one layer the painter may destroy, and the problem in it. Fields:

- `layer`: one of geometry, light, value, color, scale, surface, meaning. One only.
- `ulcer`: the problem in that layer that the details have been painted around.
- `permission` (filled by the studio if left out): nothing in that layer is protected, including what was painted before
  the critique; everything else stands; refuse, contradict or invert it, or keep it only if the painting can say what
  keeping it costs.

This is the VTL Ω side, a refusal spike with RGI's permission scoped to one layer.

Choose bold when:

- the same failure returns after repairs (Marrowline's recurring_repair, branches_converge);
- the painting is resolving toward the brief's default (in Winter Brook: the low sun behind the ruin; the brook laid across
  the surface instead of into space);
- refine critiques keep improving details around something no one has named.

## Why one layer

In Winter Brook, permission moved exactly what it named and left the rest:

- RGI with no target (round 1): the brook's route moved (a receding channel from the bottom edge); the light idea held.
- RGI aimed at the light (round 2): the light inverted (a sun behind the viewer, the ruin pale against a storm sky); the
  geometry did not move.
- Critique and the intent ledger without that permission (SR1, SR2): neither moved; the composition was set in sitting 1.

Each escape landed on the brief's next attractor (a textbook leading line; the ruin lit against dark weather). A bold
critique that names a layer may expect the painting to arrive at a new default; the next critique decides whether to
refine that, or go bold again.

> The artist tendency is to fix all the details around the bleeding ulcer of the problem, never touching what needs to be
> fixed. Fix the bleeding ulcer; have a painting around nice loose moments, because the details never mattered, and the
> ulcer healed is the painting. (Russell's art teacher, as Russell recalls it)