Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Jason Snape. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Hi Jason , we’re so appreciative of you taking the time to share your nuggets of wisdom with our community. One of the topics we think is most important for folks looking to level up their lives is building up their self-confidence and self-esteem. Can you share how you developed your confidence?
The strongest boosts to the maturity of my confidence came through trials-by-fire; being brave enough to put myself out there and being rejected or accepted. I think I’ve tended to live a life of low expectations for myself, so when those acceptances and affirmations came, they astonished me.
Being on the wrestling team through middle school, high school, and a year of college helped my insecurities. Going out there on your own, to win or lose in front of everyone, is empowering and humbling. I was not a particularly good wrestler until my junior and senior years, so I learned a lot of humility. I was frequently afraid, but did went out onto the mat anyway. In one notable match, I was up against the most muscular 105-pounder I’d ever seen. He had me so scared that I couldn’t believe it when I pinned him in 26 seconds – I literally had no idea what had happened. I won my first tournament in a similar manner. One after another, three muscleheads threw me all around the mat for the first two periods, and then, in the third period, I realized that I was somehow still alive, and they were exhausted. That’s when I pinned them. “You’re not a tough guy,” my mom said, surprised when I won. And I wasn’t a tough guy. But I was running for miles after practice, after dinner, at night, in the snow. I had endurance I didn’t even know I had. I guess it was a different kind of tough than I had always imagined.
My life has been full of being evaluated and self-revelations. Applying to colleges, getting into only one. Going to college and embracing the beautiful awareness that I no longer needed to feel limited by the perceptions others had of me. Applying to architecture school, not being accepted. Discovering a side-door into design studies, which introduced me to graphic design and my love of problem-solving and design thinking. Applying very intentionally to graduate school, and getting in exactly where I wanted to go.
I was starting to learn, starting to recognize that confidence and self-esteem did not need to show as cocky and arrogant and entitled, which was I how I had perceived it. It was also at this point that Sue entered my life, and we’ve been together for 26 years. Nothing is more powerful for your bravery and joy than having someone always in your corner, always your ally, always on your team. I attempted so many new things throughout my life because she believed in me more than I did.
My graphic design career required showing a portfolio of my best work, each step of the way. Each time it was like wrestling again – putting myself out there, as best prepared as I could be, to make a strong impression or to fall short. Always making myself vulnerable as I hoped others could see my potential, rather than believing in it myself. Every single time I got hired as a graphic designer was a significant affirmation of me rather than just my suitability for a job. I was reliant on others’ recognizing my worth. This changed through my years of teaching as a college professor, where after the morale boost of the initial hire, I spent years figuring out how to teach. I had to recognize these new strengths and weaknesses that were, again, on display in front of a lot of people. Ultimately, all my experiences up to this point helped me become better at teaching than anything else I had done before. It was exhilarating.
Teaching probably taught me the most about confidence. As a teacher, I was at my best when I remembered to be myself, not trying to do my job like my peers, or like my most-loved or most-effective teachers … I did what made the most sense to me. I had finally learned to trust myself. I had the courage to go to work with nothing more than my sketchbook and a pen, and that was all I needed to have a spectacular day with rooms full of inquisitive creative people, wrestling with problems of their own, and teaching me new ways of understanding everything I thought I knew.
When I began showing my art at festivals in 2009, they were surprisingly affirming. Surrounded by my artwork, spending the day drawing and chatting with interesting people, hearing compliments and being seen and sometimes making sales. As a designer, I never really experienced how art can resonate with people. As an artist, I felt that every time someone stopped in, and stayed, and read every story and looked at every print. My world had spoken to theirs.
Appreciate the insights and wisdom. Before we dig deeper and ask you about the skills that matter and more, maybe you can tell our readers about yourself?
I draw. I’ve been a graphic designer, and I’ve built houses, and I’ve been a college instructor for 12 years, and I’ve raised my children, and my wife and I have been through multiple career shifts and new beginnings, all for the better.
But mostly, I draw. I have kept sketchbooks of my drawings since college – 1989 – so I have thirty one bound books of my brainstorms, stories, doodles, designs, poems, meditations, and observations. Drawing is how I learn, how I understand. My sketchbooks are my sandboxes and my life journals. They are private and public and I’ll share them with anyone.
I draw whimsical things, colorful and gentle, smiley and compelling. They are not cartoons. They are not cute. They have a story that unveils, which often makes them more engaging for adults than children. They remind us of our childhoods, of favorite books, of summer days. Each of my drawings has a story/poem I’ve written in accompaniment.
I am not the watercolorist I’d like to be, so I do not do original paintings. These are all drawings from my sketchbooks that I scan into the computer, where I can make lots of color mistakes and fix them easily. I print out the finished illustrations with an excellent inkjet printer, onto thick, high quality, archival watercolor paper. It is a very satisfying process from beginning to end.
Snape’s Ridiculorum emerged about the time my children were born. I had the amazing privilege of staying home to raise my son and daughter for three years. I spent my time with their small-person logic, playgrounds, play-dates, naps, snacks, multiple changes of clothing, and a wide-open day of possibilities. I began drawing new things, and these drawings began to come out of my sketchbooks to become Art. I realized that color prints of my drawings spoke to people, and brought them joy. This led to a CafePress shop, then an art festival, then a presence at a couple local galleries, and then more art festivals and an Etsy shop. In the summer of 2023 I had my first one-person show, which was a delight and a dream come true. I’ve given artist talks and workshops on creativity, drawing, storytelling, design-thinking, and boardgame design. To each of these, I haul my suitcase full of sketchbooks, which can show more than I can tell sometimes.
My first Etsy shop opened in 2009, and my first art festival was that year also. Since then, my artwork has ebbed and flowed along, as best it could during career changes and children and sports practices and life. I’ve sought someone to help me publish my childrens’ book ideas. I’ve seen my drawing and illustration styles evolve, as well as my content and stories. In the fall of 2022, I found breathing room to give my artwork more dedicated time. In the last year I have (finally) created a business (Snape’s Ridiculorum), attended seven art festivals, submitted my art to three gallery shows, met an agent, and made leaps and bounds of progress on my book ideas.
My goals are: to fully develop the three books I’m at work on; to do 6-8 art festivals a year (including the American Library Association Conference!); to get my work into multiple galleries around the country; all so that I can work only part-time at my day job.
There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?
1. Learn to trust yourself. One of my biggest artwork revelations was trusting a drawing language that made sense to me. A lot of young creatives get hung up on style, and not having their own. I think I arrived at a style by not paying attention to it, and then just letting my work go in the direction it wanted to go. First, move on from copying others. Second, notice how good everyone else is, but don’t let it bother you or get you down. Third, follow the things and topics and ideas that interest you, not the ones you think will impress others. That led me to pay attention to childrens’ books, African sculpture, mythology, and the beauty in nature. This combined to give me a way of rendering the human form that went from painful to joyful. My forms are shape-based, which is simple, but allows me to do anything I want with them, without the constraint of literal vs. figurative realism. This was enormously freeing, and led to wonderful new explorations, ideas, and drawings.
2. Be brave enough to teach, and dedicated enough to teach well. Teaching was the most difficult thing I’ve ever done, but taught me more than anything else. It taught me about being organized, flexible, compassionate, strict, and patient. I became a public speaker, a reader of rooms, a coach, a leader. I made decisions I never wanted to make, had conversations I never wanted to have, and disappointed others and myself over and over again. It is daunting, rewarding, exhausting. I taught every level of class, from intro-level to graduate seminars and studios. It is humbling and exhilarating to see students take a prompt in directions you never expected. It is wearying to try to show students that they’re trying to circumnavigate the problem rather than actually engaging with it. It is fascinating to translate something that for you is intuitive, internalized, and habit, into a process and a journey that others can learn from to depart on their own journeys. I said I would continue to teach as long as its nourishment outweighed its depletion. And that was a truth.
3. Learn to let go. I found that as much as design is everywhere, and design is important, I had to stop caring about every single detail. I was not perfect. I didn’t even want perfection – I saw that when I cleaned up a drawing as neatly as possible, it lost its life; it became flat and uninteresting. Getting comfortable with my loose lines, my coloring uncertainties, my themes and compositions all helped me enjoy it more. These drawings became less precious and more fulfilling. I got reinforcement from this notion at an SCBWI (Society of Childrens Books Writers and Illustrators) conference, where a wonderful watercolor illustrator reviewed my portfolio of work and said that he’d like to see more of “the artist’s hand” – more of the lines, the imperfections. The me.
To close, maybe we can chat about your parents and what they did that was particularly impactful for you?
There are actually two.
1. Love of reading. We went to the library constantly growing up. My mom subscribed to Weekly Reader, which sent 3-4 hardback picture books every couple weeks. Those built a wonderful library of illustrated books that I read and re-read, over and over. Both mom and dad read to us at night, Uncle Wiggly and The Thief in the Botanical Gardens and Sprout. So I read everything, all the time. I always had a book. I read the encyclopedias in our house. I read history, sci-fi, fantasy, biography. Reading made me a generalist, and a good writer. It nourished my imagination. My love for and attention to reading is still valuable and impactful to everything I do. Favorite books: The Phantom Tollbooth, Winnie-the-Pooh, Rules of Summer, Corelli’s Mandolin, Neither Wolf nor Dog.
2. Freedom & support. My parents did not raise my two brothers and I with a burden of expectations or fulfillment. We were not told to become doctors, lawyers, accountants, artists, mill workers, or programmers. (My dad was a gym teacher and a draftsman. My mom was an administrator.) When we made what seemed like life-changing decisions about our college major, or career, or where we lived or who we loved, they were loving, they were supportive, they were concerned, they were questioning. But they did not give us ultimatums, or require us to do certain things in exchange for love or other things. They wished for our joy and fulfillment, our health and safety. We did not always deliver. But they forgave us for more things than we could count, and believed in us far more than we often did for ourselves. They taught us to be phenomenal parents ourselves. So, we are all husbands and fathers, and creative thinkers. I became a graphic designer, teacher, and artist. My middle brother became a photographer and UX designer. My youngest brother became a tattoo artist, and opened his own shop a few years ago. We all have had room and support and courage do follow our inclinations and our gifts, and we found fulfillment and opportunity there.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.jasonsnape.com
- Instagram: ridiculorum
Image Credits
All image credits: Jason Snape
