What are the Requirements for AP Art?
If you’re thinking about taking an AP Art Course, you’re probably trying to make sure that you understand the requirements. This video will walk you through the requirements and show you some examples.
What you’ll submit
The college board refers to the AP portfolio as an exam, which can lead to some confusion, as you’re not really taking an “exam”, instead, you’re submitting a portfolio of your work in the course.
What makes up the AP portfolio?
15 Digital images: You’re determine a sustained investigation topic to guide your work. Mainly that means that you’re going to ask a question about something that you’re interested in , and think about how you can find answers to the question through the work that you create. You will also ask additional questions that branch off of your first topic throughout the course.
Example: How do I use my outward appearance to represent my inward feelings?
What do you mean by digital images?
While you can work digitally, digital images doesn’t mean that you have it. It means that you’ll photograph or scan you work and submit images of the physical work that you create. The word images is used instead of pieces, because you aren’t required to submit 15 finished pieces. The 15 digital images that you submit will be a combination of finished pieces, pages from your sketchbook, and process images. All of the images work together to tell the story of your process, experimentation, and sustained investigation.
5 Selected Works
You’ll also submit 5 physical pieces to the college board. That means that you’ll pick your 5 best pieces and physically mail them to the college board. These piece may be included in the 15 digital images of your selected works, or they can be in addition to. For the most part, I recommend that they come from your sustained investigation pieces.
Writing
As you saw in the video above, students write about their work to help the viewer better understand their processes and ideas. There are 2 different ways that you’ll write about your work.
- For each digital image that you submit you’ll have 100 characters to list the materials that you used. You’ll also have 100 characters to explain your process. This should include questions that you ask, research, references. It’s a place to help explain what isn’t obvious.
- You’ll have 1200 characters to write about your work as a whole. This is where you help the viewer to understand the connection between your topic and your work. It helps them to understand how you experimented and revised your work throughout the course.