Reading the SI Rubric, Documenting Drawings & Managing the Year
- Identify what the Sustained Investigation focus areas ask for and what lifts a middling row to a high one
- Photograph drawings so value, edge and surface survive into the submitted image
- Plan a year that produces experimentation and revision rather than a late batch of finished work
What the focus areas are really looking for
The Sustained Investigation is scored on the investigation itself — a visible inquiry driving practice, experimentation and revision — and on skillful synthesis of materials, processes and ideas, with your written evidence as the place you state the inquiry in your own words. Comparing a middling row with a high one is instructive. A middling investigation typically has a real question that is stated once and never revisited; "experiments" that are changes of subject rather than changes of approach; revision that means finishing something more carefully; and writing that describes what the drawings depict. A high row shows the question changing because of the work, experiments that isolate one variable, revisions a reader can compare side by side, and writing that names decisions and what they revealed. The single most reliable upgrade is making the causal chain visible: this drawing produced this finding, which forced this next decision. Skill matters throughout — the synthesis focus asks that your materials and marks actually carry the ideas — but skill without a visible chain of reasoning stalls in the middle rows.
Documenting drawings so the image *is* the drawing
Readers score photographs, never paper. For drawings specifically: light the work with two even sources placed well off to either side (or use open shade or an overcast window) so illumination is flat across the whole sheet; shoot square-on, camera centered and the sheet parallel to the sensor, so a rectangle stays a rectangle rather than keystoning; crop to the paper edge unless the paper edge is part of the work. Set exposure and white balance so untouched paper reads as a true white without blowing out and the darkest marks still read as dark rather than a flat, detail-free black — a photograph that clips at both ends destroys the value structure you spent weeks building. For graphite and freshly fixed charcoal, the specific enemy is specular sheen: graphite is reflective and fixative adds gloss, so move the lights further off-axis, take the work out from behind glass, and check the preview at full zoom for a gray haze sitting across the darks. Include detail images where surface, mark quality or scale needs to be seen — a well-chosen detail is often more persuasive than a second full view. And photograph work as you finish it, including studies and in-progress states, because a state you drew over in March cannot be recovered in May.
Managing the year
Portfolios fail in the calendar more often than in the studio. Work backward from your school’s internal deadline, which is earlier than the official one, and set milestones: inquiry drafted and a first series complete early in the year; by mid-year at least two completed series, one genuine revision pair, and photographs of everything made so far; the final stretch reserved for selection, final documentation and writing rather than for making most of the work. Protect a weekly studio rhythm and hold a monthly photo session so documentation never becomes a crisis. Keep a running sheet listing every work with its date, medium, series and the decision that produced it — with that sheet, the written evidence practically drafts itself. One warning about specifics: do not rely on remembered or second-hand submission requirements. Image counts, character limits, file formats and deadlines are set by the College Board and can change from year to year, so confirm the current requirements on the official AP Drawing course page and with your teacher before you assemble the final submission.
A student’s Sustained Investigation is eleven competent charcoal portraits of the same sitter, all roughly the same size, viewpoint and finish. The written evidence reads: "I am investigating portraiture and emotion. I used charcoal and pastel." Diagnose the likely rubric outcome and fix it.
- 1.Test for an inquiry: "portraiture and emotion" names a subject and a mood, not a drawing problem, so a reader has no question to follow. However competent the drawings are, this alone holds the investigation in the middle rows.
- 2.Test for experimentation: medium, scale, viewpoint and duration are constant across all eleven works, so no variable has been isolated and the set reads as repetition rather than investigation.
- 3.Test for revision: there are no pairs, no in-progress states and no studies, so the row has nothing at all to reward.
- 4.Repair the question first, as a drawing problem: "how far can a face be reduced to a few massed dark shapes before it stops reading as a person?"
- 5.Generate the missing evidence: run one series that reduces the value structure step by step — nine values, then five, then three, then two — and rework one of the existing portraits under the new two-value rule so a genuine before/after pair exists.
- 6.Photograph the studies, the reduction series and both states of the reworked portrait, then rewrite the written evidence straight from the decision log: the question, the reduction experiment, what it revealed, and where to look for the reworked pair.
Never build a submission from remembered specifications. Image counts, character limits, accepted file formats and deadlines are set by the College Board and can change year to year — confirm the current requirements on the official AP Drawing course page and with your teacher, and leave time to fix a mismatch.
Book one photo session a month and shoot everything made since the last one, including studies and in-progress states. Keep a running sheet — date, medium, series, decision — beside the images. It costs an hour a month and it is what makes the last weeks about selection and writing rather than panic.
Two Sustained Investigations both contain skillful drawings and a clearly stated question. What most reliably separates the higher-scoring one?
You are photographing a large graphite drawing that has just been sprayed with fixative. Which setup best protects the score?
Answer the 2 checkpoints as you read.
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