Week 52 Prompts for Illustrate Your Week 2024

Prompts for Week 52 of 2024 for #illustrateyourweek in your illustrated journal

Dec 22, 2024

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 52

Week 52 for 2024!

It’s the final week of this year for Illustrate Your Week. Technically, there’s some overlap, but I’m going to let this Week 52 prompt set carry us through the end of the year. (See note below.)

With multiple holidays happening this week, chances are there are celebrations and reflections afoot. There may be ghosts of memory swirling around. There may be laughter and festivities and music and family photos, ugly sweaters and special foods. But the end of the year is also coming, and that means there are other tasks many of us like to do to help wrap up the year and think about the days ahead.

I’ve posted year-end reflection questions that are specifically about the “creative” year and a sketchnote your year challenge. I will post planning questions later this week and, most likely, thoughts on choosing a word for the year, which is something that has been meaningful to me for years.

I hope you find a bit of time this week to make even a note in your journal—just text. You don’t have to make a masterpiece to record your life. Don’t feel guilty if you spend less time than you sometimes do. Don’t feel bad if you don’t draw as much as you want or capture as many details or make pages that are more art than journal. If it helps relieve the pressure, make a game of adding your Week 52 notes into any spaces that remain on the Week 51 pages or just block off a half of a page, or even a quarter, and allocate that for the end of the year.

Whatever you add to your pages counts, even if it is a notation of the weather, or what you ate, or what you watched or what you read or played or wished or hoped.

I know that people looking in on this process often get caught up thinking that an illustrated journal has to look a certain way. It can. But it doesn’t have to. This doesn’t have to be an intimidating project. Be gentle with yourself. What makes this a good project is finding a way that is comfortable for you to record your life with some combination of text and illustration, a way that you enjoy.

An illustrated journal is a deeply personal project. Don’t let the fact that people share “pretty” pages overshadow the reality that the goal is documenting your life.

I always worry when something becomes so popular with big accounts that it slowly morphs into something “else.” This process doesn’t require an art degree or a full-time life as a creator.

Anyone can keep an illustrated journal and have it be fulfilling and meaningful.

That’s what I wish for you.

That’s what I hope the weekly prompts help support, encourage, and nurture.

I know what it is to be busy and overwhelmed, stressed and anxious or worse, and I know that sometimes when I sit down with my journal, I want to draw something and don’t know what. I’ve found the list of prompts can be helpful. (Sometimes I ignore the list completely, and that’s okay, too.)

I’m considering a bit of a change for my own documentation in 2025, one that I’ve considered before but have worried might split my time (or result in too much duplication, which might be a waste of time). I’ve been here before, but I think this year, I may branch out or circle back or something. I’m not sure what direction this may be or how things will balance out. I don’t usually manage to sort things out until the very end of the year and often just roll into the first. (This is real life. It’s okay if you haven’t mapped your new year a month in advance. I’ll be saying this again and again and again as I try to keep the pressure at bay.)

I do plan to continue my illustrated journal and the Illustrate Your Week prompt set.

After freely running this series for more than four years, I am still hoping to really think through how to make the prompt series more sustainable and how to better build a small community of those of us who enjoy the process. A year or so ago, there were many more people doing this project and sharing pages. Only a few have continued, and I totally understand that there are always new projects and explorations and so many year-long workshops and series that people pay for and use as a blueprint for the year.

I think keeping a journal is a “core” practice, but that’s me.

I always hoped my weekly drawing group would be a part of the solution for building a group of people around Illustrate Your Week, but I think many people who enjoy this process don’t really want or need community in that way.

I always have ideas about add-ons or monthly “extra” packets of things to incorporate, but I am also sensitive to the fact that the journal is a personal space, and many people don’t need or want more than the prompts and calendar list (and many like to look at those but don’t really need them).

(Anything I decide to do would be included in a regular subscription here at Illustrated Life, so this isn’t a nickel-and-diming moment.)

Stay tuned next week for any changes.

I would love to hear what you most value from the process of keeping an illustrated journal as well as whether or not the Illustrate Your Week prompts are useful to you. Do you like having the calendar highlights? (Or do you just look them up on your own?) Do you like having “pattern” or “icons” prompts? Would you like to have a set of quotes to work in each month? (Or do you prefer to find your own?) Do you like having 9-10 prompts even though you might not do them all? Or is it better to have only 5-6 (the risks being that you may not like them)?

Lots of questions.

It’s a project I care deeply about, and it has been so gratifying to see so many people start keeping an illustrated journal and turn their documentation of daily and weekly life into something meaningful and visually satisfying over the last several years.

Thank you to those who participate in this.

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 52:

Mathematics Day (22)
National Eggnog Day (24)
Christmas Eve (24)
A’Phabet Day or No “L” Day (25)
Christmas (25)
Kwanzaa (26)
Boxing Day (26)
National Candy Cane Day (26)
National Make Cut-Out Snowflakes Day (27)
National Fruitcake Day (27)
Card Playing Day (28)
National Call a Friend Day (28)
National Bacon Day (30)

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.