For this sustained investigation I had to pick a theme to draw all of my pieces by. I chose to make my theme shoes, not because I love shoes but because I like how they represent the people who are wearing them by showing where they've been. Through this theme I experimented with different medias, shoe positioning, mark making, colors, and more to see if I could emphasize the mood or the story I was going for in each piece. I experimented with medias in artworks such as #4 (graphite pencils), #3 (colored pencil and oil pastel), #5 (oil pastels), #8 (black pen), and #12 (watercolor paint) just to see how it could emphasize the mood or meaning of each piece. My biggest challenges with these pieces were probably time and coming up with different ideas/meanings for each piece. I have a job outside of school so it was hard for me to find time at home to work on my projects but I was able to overcome this by working hard during class, using FLEX time on my art, and by working on the artworks at night. I mentioned that it was challenging to come up with different ideas/ meanings for my pieces and that was true, my sustained wasn't really going the way I wanted and I was not only running out of ideas, but also motivation. It wasn't until around sustained #6 that that motivation began to pick up. It was through that piece (#6) that I realized that I wanted to represent different events/world issues that people struggle with through shoes. My sustain shifted from representing emotions to representing more serious topics like poverty, drug crime, equality in the workforce, and the events between Russia and Ukraine. That was my "aha" moment, the moment I realized that I could relate my work to current issues and possibly have an impact on the viewers of my artwork. I grew so much throughout this whole sustained investigation. I was able to improve my skill with medias such as colored pencils, graphite, oil pastels, and watercolor. I also improved at coming up with artwork ides, and giving more meaning to my pieces, along with drawing things more realistically (even without a reference photo). This sustained has allowed me to enhance my skills in realism, different medias, and the writing portion of my work. I really loved this sustained investigation and I think it perfectly displays the amount of growth I had throughout this AP Art class.