Week 3 Journal Prompts for Illustrate Your Week 2025
Prompts for Week 3 in your illustrated journal
I post a new set of Illustrate Your Week prompts every Sunday to help inspire and nurture the process of keeping an illustrated journal of your life. Add text and images to make a visual record that is uniquely you.
Illustrate Your Week Prompts for Week 3 (2025)
Week 3 for 2025. There is a lot going on in the world right now. I am not sure any of us need prompts that take away from the reality of the world. Go with what is true for you. The prompts are just suggestions. They offer a rubric and a ready-made set of things that you can draw or think about or document. They are here if you need additional nudges or ideas or suggestions that just let you focus on what is right in front of you or let you tune out reality for a bit.
In an illustrated journal that is documenting your days and your weeks in a real world in a real life in a real moment in time, everything that is going on around you is also a part of that record.
Illustrate Your Week is a flexible project. Each week, I share weekly prompts and calendar notes that can be used as fill-in or fodder for documenting your life with a combination of words and art.
Your illustrated journal might be a sketchnote of your week. It might be more like a diary with doodles, or it might be a sketchbook with marginalia.
I encourage you to find your own approach, and don’t be afraid to change week to week as you experiment to find the combination and balance that is most comfortable and satisfying to you. The illustrated journal is a record of your life. Only you can record this story in your unique voice and style.
Write or draw as much as you want! You can draw anything on your pages and fill in with your daily notes. There is no one-size-fits-all formula for how to keep an illustrated journal or for what counts.
You don’t need a more exciting life. This project celebrates the quotidian.— Amy Cowen
I leave the information below week to week so that anyone finding the prompts will have some guidance no matter what week it is.
Illustrated Journal Basics, Background Information, & How to Get Started
You can start your illustrated journal at any time of the week. Just pick up and start where you are with whatever the current week is. You may also find these earlier posts helpful:
There Are a Lot of Prompts
Should you do them all? Probably not! Prompts are always just ideas for things you might include in your journal. Your immediate life is really where your journal starts — and it may be that your memory life has an equal role. Observances can be a conduit to memory, an excuse to buy and draw (or Google) something simple (like a Twinkie), or simply fun to write down for context in terms of the passage of time.
The time you spend documenting the details of your life can help reinforce and strengthen your memory.
Daily Notes
Make plenty of notes in your pages! As an illustrated journal, the format invites an implicit mix of drawings and words. For me, the project is always a journal, not simply a sketchbook. Even though I draw lots of random things (especially portraits), the book as a whole is a “journal” — an illustrated journal of my life. My daily notes help keep the journal anchored in my life.
While I don’t believe in rules for personal art projects, I do think the personal notes, stories, lists, and tidbits are an important foundation.
Use the Prompts that Speak to You
As always, the prompts are provided simply as optional nudges you may want to mix in with the recording you do of your day-to-day life. If you do Illustrate Your Week for a while, you will find that some prompts recur. (This is a good thing and true to the process of keeping a journal based on your life.) The weekly prompts give you options if you find yourself, pen in hand, and not sure what to draw, paint, write, or record in your journal.
Your illustrated journal is a freeform space to hold your personal documentation, memories, hopes, wishes, and the tiny details that make up everyday life. — Amy Cowen
Weekly Calendar Connections
The general calendar connections (a short list of unofficial “observances” and holidays) are behind the paywall this year. (The calendar connections are easy to look up online. The list below is simply a convenience for paid subscribers.)
The prompts themselves are still available to everyone (above).
Please note: “commenting” on a post that is paywalled is not possible without a paid subscription. This is part of the Substack interface, and I apologize. I would always choose to allow everyone to comment. There is a “Sunday post” each week, and you can always comment there if there are questions.
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