Week 41 Prompts for Illustrate Your Week 2024
Prompts for Week 41 of 2024 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 41
Week 41 for 2024! Depending on what other projects you have underway, you may find that you have less time or energy for your journal. That’s okay! The time you spend in your illustrated journal may wax and wane, and you should be generous with yourself in allowing those fluctuations.
Even if you spend less time on illustrations, try and make daily notes.
Getting at least a bit of the texture of each week on the page maintains the continuity of your record. Your journal is real and alive because of the daily living you capture, even if it is just the view from your chair and a list of shows you watched or podcast episodes you listened to. Prompts like “something that made you smile each day” can be excellent for this purpose. This is also a much more difficult prompt than it sometimes seems. It is designed to help you stop and reflect each day — what one thing made you smile, or stands out, or made you laugh. These are details unique to your life and your journal!
Illustrate Your Week is a flexible project. I share weekly prompts and calendar notes that can be used as fill-in or fodder. Or, you can use the prompts as your starting point. Write or draw as much as you want. The illustrated journal is a record of your life. Only you can record this story in your unique voice and style.
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.
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
Calendar Connections
The calendar connections each week give a bit of random context that might inspire you to think about or notice something specific. Maybe they spark memory. Maybe they nudge you to draw something you wouldn’t normally draw or give you an idea for something to draw when you want to draw but don’t want to figure out “what” to draw. Many of these are very informal observances, but they can be fun starting points.
Here are some of the calendar notes that made my radar for Week 41:
National Noodle Day (6)
National Mad Hatter Day (6)
World Architecture Day (7)
National Fluffernutter Day (8)
World Dyslexia Day (8)
World Octopus Day (8)
Ada Lovelace Day (8)
International Top Spinning Day (9)
National Coming Out Day (11)
Yom Kippur (12)
World Hospice and Palliative Care Day (12)
I leave most of 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.
Daily Notes
As always, I hope you take time to make plenty of notes in your pages. As an illustrated journal, there is 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. For me, this isn’t simply a sketchbook. My daily notes help keep the journal anchored in my life.
While I don’t believe in rules for personal projects, for myself, I do think the personal notes, stories, lists, and tidbits are a foundation.
Something is Missing on the Calendar List
There are lots of dates on the calendar each week. I don’t want the weekly prompts to be simply a calendar toss-up, so I pick and choose, always aiming for a list I hope will inspire you to draw or reflect. Your journal has the space for any and all of the days that are important to you. What you value and want to record comes first. Prompts are always best thought of as filler, not as a prescription. You might have other days that are of particular note for you. We shouldn’t all be recording exactly the same things in our journals!
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.
You don’t need a more exciting life. This project celebrates the quotidian.— Amy Cowen
Your journal has the space for any and all of the days that are important to you. What you value and want to record comes first. Prompts are always best thought of as filler, not as a prescription. — Amy Cowen
I am extra excited to draw multiple tentacles.