Picturing the Creative Process: A Brief Examination of Grant Snider’s The Shape of Ideas / R. W. Watkins

Picturing the Creative Process:

A Brief Examination of Grant Snider’s

The Shape of Ideas

R. W. Watkins

This debut collection from Wichita, Kansas cartoonist Grant Snider opens with a strip entitled ‘Genius Is...’. In its eleven panels, exceptional ability is broken down into ten curious percentages. For Snider at least, genius is 1% inspiration, 29% perspiration, 5% improvisation, 8% aspiration, 7% contemplation, 15% exploration, 13% daily frustration, 11% imitation, 10.9% desperation and 0.1% pure elation. Agree or disagree with his figures, it is these ingredients or components that serve as the headings for the book’s ten sections. The strips that comprise these sections are mostly told from the contemplative point of view of Snider’s avatar: a simply drawn version of the cartoonist himself.

Rightly or wrongly, I’m immediately reminded of Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics, particularly Chapter 7: ‘The Six Steps’. I am also aware that not everyone will be as familiar with Snider’s series of Incidental Comics as what they are McCloud’s Understanding Comics. Try and imagine if the McCloud book had been composed in a series of one- or two-page coloured strips grouped according to Snider’s ten aspects of genius, and you might have some idea of what we’re dealing with in The Shape of Ideas.

Snider’s depictions of the creative process depend largely on metaphor and simile. Sometimes the pictures serve as complimentary metaphors for the ideas; on other occasions the metaphors (or similes) extend from the words. As evidenced in his treatment of artistic inspiration and its fleeting nature in strips such as ‘needles and haystacks’, Snider is certainly adept in his use of such devices on both the visual and linguistic levels.

The majority of these strips are composed of multiple quadrilateral panels, but, make no mistake about it, Snider is no slouch when it comes to drawing borderless ‘panels’ and one-panel ‘maze’ and ‘map’ comics either.

Snider’s artistic style is primarily a simplistic one, though it becomes seemingly more complex as it becomes more abstract—as the ideas become more abstract. Ironically, it is the concepts that find their basis in simplicity and negative space that tend to lend themselves to complexity. Owing to their geometric stylings, ‘nothing’, ‘minimalism is simple’ and ‘The Problem of Perception’ stand out as strips in which less is truly more.

One should also note that the majority of Snider’s comics are composed using a limited palette, with one or two dominant colours figuring against a largely grisaille background. So an abundance of various colours—or, as in the case of ‘Negative Thinking’, a simple lack thereof—also lends a sense of complexity to certain strips, particularly those of a more abstract nature. ‘Morning’, ‘Colors’ and ‘Color Studies’ demonstrate the ability of colours to exude a certain intricacy as they overwhelm.

On the literary side of things, there is a strong poetic component present in The Shape of Ideas. I hesitate in referring to such exemplary strips as ‘poetry comics’—the majority of Snider’s output is far too classy to be dragged down by such a vague, contrived term from recent years; but there is an undeniable poetry inherent in a large percentage of his phrasing. Often the poetry is of a conceptual nature, as in the case of ‘My Process’, ‘Lost Ideas’ and ‘The Missing Piece’. As might be expected of a cartoonist, there are also elements of concrete poetry evident in his rendering of various words and phrases, particularly in the title-lending ‘Shape of Ideas’, ‘(Blurry) Resolutions’, and the untitled strip on page 95 (‘Less is More’). (I must admit to having been reminded of Max Brandel’s The MAD Book of Word Power in such cases.)

To better appreciate Snider’s poetic abilities, consider ‘My Process’ stripped of its images and hand-lettering, and reduced to merely words in a common font:

I concentrate

Until everything

Becomes invisible

Except the thoughts

I think

Then one by one

I write them down

In

Visible ink.

Stylistically, such phrasing brings to mind bards as diverse as William Carlos Williams and Sharon Olds. With a conceptual poem like this for its basis, a Snider strip is guaranteed very little competition in the world of so-called ‘poetry comics’—at least judging from what I’ve witnessed of that upstart genre so far.

Poetry and cartooning are not the only major interests of Snider, mind you. Obviously music, for example, serves as key subject matter in a number of these strips. References to acts as varied as John Coltrane, Tom Waits and Joni Mitchell can be found in one strip alone.

The book is also punctuated with references to the coffee and other beverages that one associates with such artsy music, ‘caffeine culture’, and the like. For Snider, it seems, caffeine is the fuel that often drives his hand during moments of stress, self-doubt or physical exhaustion. “Boil some coffee in a pot / drink it till there comes a thought,” he rhymes in ‘An Incantation’. It’s obviously his drug of choice, if not a full-fledged panacea.

As well, a strong appreciation of nature and the seasons (at least the three least cold seasons!) is immediately detected in a large percentage of those strips which take place in the outdoors. Such external environments often function as more than mere backdrops, intricately ‘commenting’ on the kernels of creativity—or lack thereof.

Speaking of the outdoor scenes, there’s a certain childlike simplicity about The Shape of Ideas; or rather there’s a certain simplicity that harkens back to childhood. I am reminded of the animated segments from early Sesame Street and the illustrations in 1970s grade-school literary texts. With its high wooden fences, autumn leaves, puffy clouds and round orange suns, it is even vaguely reminiscent of coloured Peanuts strips and the Bill Melendez animated specials. For Gen X’ers in particular, it’s a very agreeable framework in which to present some very complex and philosophical ideas about aesthetics and the creative process.

This is not to say that the book is an intellectual children’s book per se. The eighth chapter, ‘Imitation’, ups the ante on edginess, with references to “hallucinogenic lines”, “satanic” shapes, and “midcentury modern mosh”. The edginess extends into the remainder of the book, with Snider expressing his fears and insecurities regarding everything from writer’s block to his artistic (im)mortality to “disembodied floating skulls”. The absurdities and paranoia of the penultimate ‘Desperation’ chapter provide a giddy climax symbolic of the artist’s burgeoning success, with the succeeding ‘Pure Elation’ chapter and ‘postscript’ strip (‘Corrections’) serving as a coda of sorts.

In spite of the sheer entertainment value of his insecurities, I don’t think Snider needs to worry about his creative well drying up any time soon. Any cartoonist who can wax poetic and accurately depict the creative process in all its complexities surely has a grip on his own creative powers that will allow him decades of entertainingly original output. (Scott McCloud never rested on his laurels following Understanding Comics, did he.) To the best of my knowledge, some children’s picture books are already in the works, so new material for our perusal is not a long way off. In the meantime, curl up with The Shape of Ideas in all its dreamy glory as if you were on a sick day off from school; and check out Snider’s creations as they emerge anew, at the Incidental Comics website (at incidentalcomics.com).

(Read R. W. Watkins’s interview with Grant Snider for Pattern Recognition here.)