Week 1 Journal Prompts for Illustrate Your Week 2025
Prompts for Week 1 of 2025 for #illustrateyourweek 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 1 (2025)
Week 1 for 2025! Happy New Year!
If you’ve landed here then maybe you are continuing an illustrated journal for this year or have decided to start one. Welcome or welcome back, whichever is appropriate. If you are recommitting to your journal practice, that, too, is wonderful. There are many ways to keep such a journal, and I hope the Illustrate Your Week prompt set can be a source of inspiration or reflection or simply a nudge.
Keeping an illustrated journal is such a beautiful process, mindful and artful. I find that the illustrated journal is malleable enough to hold whatever I need in a week.
I have been keeping a journal in this format for a number of years now, but it always seems new to me in some ways. I’m not tired of the process, and I am still happy to have this be the one constant thread of my creative year. I fit other projects and series in, but this one is important because it is the documentation of days and weeks lived. This is the holder of memories, and I treasure it for that.
There is a lot of information below. If you have any questions, please let me know.
Here’s to a wonderful Week 1 and fresh page in the year.
Note - This is a partial week because January started mid-week. I do the prompts from Sunday to Saturday, so “my” Week 1 will only include a few days of January.
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
For the last few years, I’ve shared calendar notes as part of the weekly post. You can find these calendar-based observances online using one of a number of sites that catalog thousands of observances (mostly made-up) throughout the year.
I offer very little incentive for people to upgrade here at Illustrated Life. Putting the calendar connections behind a paywall this year is a small change. 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.
🎯 Start the new year with 40% off a one-year subscription. Today only. (You have to use that specific link for this to work.)
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Illustrated Life to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.