Finishing 52 Weeks of List Comics - Year 2
Year two of the weekly "diary list comics" series
As the year winds down, a summary look at the second year of 52 weeks of list comics, a simple digital weekly documentation project, a colorful thread that I carried quietly through the year.
This week: Year Two of 52 Weeks of List Comics ⭐ Looking Back ⭐ Illustrate Your Week Prompts ⭐ Special Offers!
I hope your week was good. I know from the comments that many of you were facing difficult holidays, and many of you carry the weight of memory and loss through December each year, stewarding it, nurturing it, acknowledging it, and holding the simple reality that you continue to move forward. December offers a liminal space to stop, acknowledge, and remember.
Though this is the second Christmas since the contours of my house changed, I stood at the threshold of the tree and my anniversary with the weight of sign, symbol, memory, and loss pressing in on all sides. In some ways, my writing about those things was less transparent and more distilled than in other years. Turning the prism, catching and refracting light, and looking through a variety of lenses is how I sift, analyze, uncover, track continuity, and make meaning.
Knowing that I would be sharing the end of a series today, I opened last year’s post to see what I had noted about the list comics. I found myself skimming an opening letter about a dinner that sounded, uncannily, like what I made this Christmas Eve, although this year, it was excellent. Last year’s letter startled me. It is unmistakably me, but I didn’t know that this year was a repeat. (Oddly, no one else seems to remember either, but the words are there, the description that fills in the truth.)
When trying to track down the details of the dinner, trying to fill in the few elements that are left veiled or encoded in the public recording, I looked at the weekly list comic from last year. I found the same reference there, a simple phrase that confirms the “mush” of what I made.
These are weeks of the year that I most like to hold. I like to sit with them in slowness, in mindfulness, in the light of the tree at night, or in the morning as the room gradually lightens. In reality, these weeks are exhausting. They don’t always offer the reflective time I want. The days move quickly, and there are many moving parts.
One of the things I always hope to do is a year-end sketchnote reflecting the creative year. (I will probably do it digitally this year.) I encourage you to consider a year-end sketchnote, too.
As we approach the turn of year in a few days, I wish you peace. I hope you close the year with soft thoughts about what the year held and how you moved within it and through it. I hope you approach the new year with softness, clarity, hope, and optimism.
Amy
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Year Two of 52 Weeks of List Comics
As someone who frequently structures creative life with work rooted in series, I know that the desire for the comfort of the familiar often sits, arms akimbo, next to the risks of repeating a series. Sometimes when you try to do a project you really enjoyed a second time, it doesn’t quite live up to the way you experienced it the first time. Repeats can work, but making it work requires thinking through the bones of the project, keeping the pulse, and changing what’s left just enough to add grooves you can hook into with new meaning.
Last year I did 52 weeks of something that I called “diary list comics.” Each week I did a simple digital panel that contained short notations from the week, small details in colorful chiclet-style boxes. The project wasn’t really about drawing, although most panels included a central image tied to the week. Mostly, the project had resonance as a visual way to record the week digitally, something that grew out of older, analog weekly check-ins.
The first year saw me through the death of my partner and the long months that followed. Surprisingly, I kept up with the practice and finished out the year. When it came time to decide about year two, I rolled into the first week without time to make any major structural changes. I knew I wanted to continue, even though I felt the subtle risk in the repeat.
As year two unfolded, a few things shifted. There are some very small structural variances between the years, but I also relaxed into the lists, with or without an emphasis on the central drawing. I used the same simple palette again, and I incorporated a background color each week.
There were a few times this year when I thought I might end up behind, but I finished. The weekly panels, simple in concept and construct, became a touchstone each week, and I am glad to have done this project for a second year. The weekly panels offer me a range of information at a glance and in an easy format. This same information also gets captured in other ways, echoes in my illustrated and text journals, layers of redundancy, but each weekly panel stands alone, too.
I posted these panels throughout the year on a page that gave me some soft accountability to keep steady with the project. One thing that stands out for me is that year two was a quiet project. Each weekly panel is an internal capture, a shorthand recording of footholds, highlights, and quotidian markers in a week. This project is for me. I wasn’t sharing these weekly snapshots performatively. They aren’t shared below, really, for you to read them. They are shared simply as a whole, the culmination of a dedicated year-long project.
When we find the right container and scaffolding, our projects become grounding anchors.
Paid subscribers: Behind the paywall, there is a short timelapse of how a few of these weeks filled in. This isn’t anything big, just a small inside look at the process.
Year Three?
A third year might tip the scales, but I am not ready to stop.
This project has become an anchor, one that is relatively easy to integrate in my week, and one that I enjoy both in the making and in the final product. I am thinking around the edges of continuation and not overthinking how the new year will or won’t change. I guess I will see what happens week one.
Looking Back (same time year over year)
2024: Wrapping Up 52 Weeks for 2024
2023: It’s not a failure: Making peace with not finishing
Illustrated Journal Prompts & Other Resources
Made It?
Thank you for reading along!
Thank you for being here with me in this calendar year. I hope your transition into the new year is smooth. I would love to hear about the projects you are planning for 2025. Will you be adding or trying something new?
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Unless otherwise noted, all images in this post are © A. Cowen. All rights reserved.
One of my goals this year is to follow through with learning more. I signed up for an online class on Jan 10 with Danny Gregory and I am really looking forward to it! I feel like I need to nurture my inner artist a little.
" . . . in the morning as the room gradually lightens" - I silently said a big YES to that phrase, Amy, as I, too, find it one of the best times to reflect and gather thoughts and memories, especially this time of year. I also like your idea to sketch the year as a review of sorts. I'm going to try that - love that idea. It's so neat to see your 52 Weeks of List Comics, measurable fruit of your labor. This sentence, too, is so beautiful, "I hope you close the year with soft thoughts about what the year held and how you moved within it and through it." I wish the same peace for you too, Amy.