AP Art: Grow Your Sustained Investigation with Sketchbook Prompts That Work

Every strong AP portfolio shows practice, experimentation, and revision. Sketchbook prompts make that process visible — and manageable — for your students.

Below is work from one of my recent AP students. These pages show how sketchbook practice, experimentation, and revision actually look when students are encouraged to push their ideas, test materials, and make connections.

Early planning pages — notes and sketches to explore an inquiry question.

A sketch becomes more than a sketch — every test, note, and idea is connected to the big idea.

Strong portfolios show the full path from idea → sketch → experiment → final work.

If your interested, I have my ready-to-use Sketchbook Prompts you can drop right into any AP Drawing or 2-D classroom available in my Teachers Pay Teachers store. Each prompt encourages students to:

• Try new materials and surfaces

• Practice risk-taking and revision

• Make visible connections between materials, processes, and ideas

• Build strong written evidence for their portfolio

You can use these prompts as weekly warm-ups, mini check-ins, or independent sketchbook tasks — all while giving students clear structure that still feels open-ended and personal.