Back in high school, I had the opportunity to take Advanced Placement 2D Art. Essentially, the premise of this class is to build up a portfolio that revolves around your sustained investigation (SI). This portfolio is later graded based on your compositional, color, and technical skills, as well as how the artworks relate to said sustained investigation.

My particular SI revolved around my struggles with academic validation. To boil it down, I felt that my grades directly affected my self-worth. If I got a low grade on a test, I would feel as if I were a failure. (I still struggle with this a bit but it’s not as bad as it used to be.)

I wanted to represent this in my artwork but I made it visually interesting by adding a fantasy element to the pieces. This brings me to the artwork that I ultimately redrew.

This illustration, which I titled The Wishing Well, was the first and main piece in my SI. My goal for this work was to convey the idea of “wishing for a change”. I tried to jam-pack as much symbolism into the illustration, such as the lilies and the butterflies. Looking back at it, there’s a lot that could’ve been better. The composition is flat, the values are similar, and the overall piece looks dull and depressing.

After Artfight, I found myself feeling a bit burned out and wanting to draw, but not knowing where to start. Then, I chose to redraw some of my old AP illustrations. I figured that it’s been 2 years, so I might as well, and that it might be a good way to see how much I’ve improved.

Here is the redraw. I tried to fix all of the things I wasn’t exactly happy with, such as the composition and the colors. I pushed the values more, and I made the girl and the well larger in the composition, making them the focal point. I also didn’t spend as much time on this as it was just for fun.

Overall, I’m happy with how the new illustration came out. I think it does show how I’ve improved since senior year! Over the next few weeks, whenever I have time or I don’t know what to draw, I’ll choose one of the many from my AP portfolio!

As a bonus, here’s a side-by-side and the TikTok I made about it (which you can totally follow me at tiktok.com/@silvertopp.22)

I hope you enjoyed my rambling, and my next post will be the last one before the fall semester starts!