创作：实践、实验与修改

Focus: The Sustained Investigation is an inquiry-based, in-depth study of materials, processes, and ideas over time. (CED Big Idea 2)

• It is a body of work — around 15 images — that grows from one stated question or idea.
• Sustained means over time: works should show development, not fifteen versions of the same day.
• 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 in 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.

Focus: The CED's three engines of making: practice (repeat), experimentation (test), revision (modify and reimagine). (CED 2.A)

• Practice repeats a skill until it is reliable — the tenth ellipse, the fiftieth hand.
• Experimentation tests without needing success: new tool, new scale, new surface, new speed.
• Revision returns to a work and changes it on purpose — crop, rework, redraw, or respond with a new version.
• Show all three visibly across the portfolio: scorers must see them, not trust you.
• Keep 'failed' experiments — annotated failures are stronger evidence than unexplained successes.
• A revision pair (first state / revised state, with a sentence on what changed) is classic AP evidence.

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

• Ask of each work: could this idea exist in any other medium? If yes, the synthesis can go deeper.
• Burnt-edge charcoal drawings about wildfire; thread-stitched portraits about family ties — material as meaning.
• Process can carry meaning too: obsessive stippling for time, blind contour for memory's uncertainty.
• Synthesis is the highest row of the Sustained Investigation rubric — the 5-score discriminator.
• It cannot be added at the end: it comes from experimenting early with materials that relate to the idea.
• One sentence of written evidence should be able to name the link: 'I used X because the idea needed Y.'

Focus: The rubric's named drawing skills: 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 skills: a figure in a lit interior shows space, light and shade, and composition at once.
• 'Good' scores need competent skills; '5' portfolios show advanced skills with visual evidence everywhere.
• Skills must be visible in the image submitted — photograph well or the skill disappears.
• Weak-skill areas are fixable with targeted practice blocks — see the craft topics of this course.
• In written evidence, name skills with the CED's own words so scorers connect claim to image instantly.

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

• Plan with thumbnails and notan before committing — composition is decided before the first real mark.
• Craft means physical care: clean margins where intended, controlled smudging, flat unwrinkled paper.
• Damaged or dirty work photographs badly; protect drawings with cover sheets and fixative.
• Consider scale as a decision: intimate A5 and commanding A1 are different statements of the same idea.
• Unresolved corners betray hurry — finish or deliberately leave raw, and let the writing own the choice.
• Craft is not fussiness: an expressive charcoal can be perfectly crafted expression.

Focus: Development — the furthering of an inquiry through in-depth exploration — is what 'sustained' looks like in the images.

• Sequence matters: arrange 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 to its extreme.
• Series thinking helps — variations on one motif 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.