AP Exam Practice - Marino

- Identify the inquiry or questions that guided your sustained investigation (20 points)

I believe family is one of the most important things in life, especially as I am someone who is very family oriented. For my sustained investigations I wanted to draw portraits of my parents, aunts and uncles, and grandparents. Since I am a highschool senior and I now have my senior portrait I decided to focus on my families senior portraits. However I wanted to be able to show who they were as a person and express that through the piece. I asked how could I do this especially since each decade of graduation varied and with their personal experiences as a teenager. I also asked what material I could use to make each piece unique and individualistic. After asking these different questions I came to the conclusion of what I needed to do for my sustained investigations. I came to the conclusion that I should use mixed-media and combine that with my portraits, that would be charcoal drawings. This conclusion and questions have guided each and everyone of my sustained investigations. 

- Describe how your sustained investigation shows evidence of practice, experimentation, and revision guided by your inquiry or questions (20 points)

Each of my sustained investigations shows evidence of practice, experimentation, and revision guided by my questions because of how different and unique each piece is. I first started in gouache for my paternal grandparents because I was sure if I liked painting or drawing for these pieces. However it goes together because there lifestyles when younger are like paint, very flowy and smooth. That is when I decided for my maternal family I would do charcoal because there life was different, it was more strict and hard like it is to use the material. So I decided to experiment and try new practices of mediums for my different side of my family. However when I got to the charcoal portraits is when I decided to start furthering my mixed medium with layering and unusual material in the pieces, and incorporating them in different ways. For my first I decided to use wallpaper as the clothing, and in another I created a 3-layered piece of work. So for each sustained investigation I have kept experimenting with how to further my mix-media. However I haven't really shown revision, the only time I used it was for my Aunt Jill when I only created a portrait and didn't add anything else. Then later with comments I decided to further the piece with using styles of overlapping and underlaying.