Make: Practice, Experimentation, and Revision

The Sustained Investigation 持续探究 is an inquiry-based, in-depth study of materials, processes, and ideas over time — CED Big Idea 2, and 60% of your AP score.

• It is a body of work 系列作品 — around 15 images — that grows from one stated question or idea.
• Sustained means over time: the works should show growth, not fifteen versions of the same afternoon.
• Plan a rhythm: make, document, reflect, revise, make again — every one or two weeks.
• The investigation is drawings and process: studies, tests, and revisions belong inside it.
• Depth beats breadth. One question pushed hard scores above ten unrelated good drawings.
• Start early in the year. A rushed investigation is visible at a glance.

The CED names three engines of making: practice 练习 (repeat), experimentation 实验 (test), and revision 修改 (modify and reimagine). (CED 2.A)

Three engines of making: repeat a skill, test something new, return and change

• Practice repeats a skill until it is reliable — the tenth ellipse, the fiftieth hand.
• Experimentation tests without needing success: a new tool, a new scale, a new surface, a new speed.
• Revision returns to a work and changes it on purpose: crop it, rework it, redraw it, or answer it with a new version.
• Show all three visibly across the portfolio — scorers must see them, not take your word.
• Keep the failures. An annotated failed experiment is stronger evidence than an unexplained success.
• A revision pair 修改前后对比 (first state and revised state, with one sentence on what changed) is classic AP evidence.

Synthesis 综合 means the three components fuse — the material and process choices are the idea. (CED 2.B)

When material, process, and idea explain each other, the rubric calls it synthesis

• Ask of each work: could this idea exist in any other medium? If yes, the synthesis can go deeper.
• Charcoal drawings with burnt edges about wildfire; thread-stitched portraits about family ties — material as meaning.
• Process can carry meaning too: obsessive stippling for time passing, blind contour for the uncertainty of memory.
• Synthesis is the top row of the scoring guidelines — the discriminator between a 4 and a 5.
• It cannot be added at the end. It grows from experimenting early with materials that relate to the idea.
• One sentence of written evidence should name the link: "I used X because the idea needed Y."

The rubric names the drawing skills 绘画技能: mark-making, line, surface, space, light and shade, composition. (CED 2.C/2.D)

• Audit your portfolio against the six skills — every one should appear strongly somewhere.
• One work can carry several: a figure in a lit interior shows space, light and shade, and composition at once.
• "Good" portfolios show competent skills; a 5 shows advanced skills with visual evidence 视觉证据 everywhere.
• A skill only counts if it is visible in the submitted image — photograph well or the skill disappears.
• Weak areas are fixable with targeted practice blocks — that is what the craft topics of this course are for.
• In written evidence, name skills with the CED's own words, so the scorer connects claim to image instantly.

Finished works are judged as made objects: composition designed, edges considered, surface controlled.

• Plan with thumbnail sketches 小稿 and notan before committing — composition is decided before the first real mark.
• Craft 工艺 means physical care: clean margins where you intend them, controlled smudging, flat unwrinkled paper.
• Damaged or dirty work photographs badly. Protect drawings with cover sheets and fixative.
• Treat scale 尺度 as a decision: an intimate A5 and a commanding A1 are different statements of the same idea.
• Unresolved corners betray hurry. Finish them — or leave them raw on purpose, and let the writing own the choice.
• Craft is not fussiness: an expressive charcoal can be perfectly crafted expression.

Development 发展 — the furthering of an inquiry through in-depth exploration — is what "sustained" looks like in the images.

• Sequence matters: arrange the works so the investigation's growth is readable from image 1 to image 15.
• Development moves: change scale, change viewpoint, combine two earlier works, push one variable 变量 to its extreme.
• Series thinking helps — variations on one motif 母题 show deliberate exploration, not repetition.
• Mid-course turns are healthy when documented: "the shadows became the subject" is development.
• Compare your newest work to your first. If nothing changed — skill, idea, or ambition — push a variable.
• Scorers explicitly look for works that show development, not fifteen isolated performances.

• Build the portfolio as a story: image 1 states the question, the middle images test and turn, the late images answer with authority. Scorers read the sequence.
• Submit process images on purpose — two or three journal spreads, tests, or revision pairs among the 15 make practice, experimentation, and revision undeniable.
• The 5-portfolios show synthesis: pick materials that mean something for your question, and say the link out loud in the written evidence.
• Audit against the six drawing skills at mid-year, not in April — the gaps you find write your practice plan while there is still time.
• Never pad with lookalikes. Fifteen near-identical drawings read as one idea repeated; variations must each move a variable.