-By Donato

Dungeons & Dragons Map    Donato Giancola     ~ 1984    24″ x 18″   hand drawn 1/4″ graph paper

Reviewing recent work for entry to Spectrum and reflecting upon the entirety of my studio creations within this past year, my thoughts drifted back to years long ago and the body of work I would create around specific themes and motivations.  With a little post-modern analysis and 20/20 hindsight, I can now see the work ethic and approaches I practiced back as a teenager structured my career to this day.

Star Wars-The Empire Strikes Back     Donato Giancola    1980   24″ x 18″

A recent raiding trip to my parent’s cellar allowed the recovery of a couple portfolios of drawings from periods of my artistic pastimes. As a teenager, I never considered myself an artist, nor did my friends identify me as one with a capital ‘A’.  Rather, my talents for creative thinking and drawing were always harnessed to clarify stories or create vehicles through which story could be conveyed – drawing maps, castles, and dungeon descriptions for role-playing with Dungeons & Dragons, creating a rule system and accompanying charts for a science fiction game we called ‘Omega Corps’, and reinterpreting visuals from other works like the Star Wars universe.

Omega Corps Rules   Donato Giancola and Vincent Schelzo     ~ 1983   

Art was always a ritual around the transferal of narrative, never designed to make a ‘statement’ or celebrate a mere play of ‘shape and form’, art as an end unto itself.  Looking back now, it is easy to see why formal modern art has no power to hold me and why I seek to build greater complexity into the images and narratives emerging from my gesture drawings.

Speaking to the title of this post – Possessed, Prolific, Talent -I  wanted to share with you a small sample of the volume of material produced and passion I had with these forms of expression.  It was not just a developed or innate ability I had as a ‘gifted’ child which allowed me to succeed as an artist. Rather, I believe, it was the unstoppable desire to create, express and tell stories which propelled me to produce such a quantity of material that I am shocked, even now, at everything I produced.

Dungeons & Dragons Map    Donato Giancola     ~ 1984    24″ x 18″

I was never bored as a child. My hands were never idle. Never.  From drawing stories and coloring with markers, to painting plastic model kits of dinosaurs and WWII aircraft, to attempting stop motion animation with my parents 8mm film camera, to painting lead figurines for D&D and creating dioramas out of them,  to creating science fiction starship cockpits with electric lights and dials, I cannot recall a single day of leisure.  For me, to play was thrilling, challenging, and full of pleasure and passion.  I had no inhibitions.  When I tackled projects for my games, I became Possessed.

It is for this reason I seek to channel those interests and ethics to this day, in service of my professional career as an artist.

Star Wars-The Empire Strikes Back     Donato Giancola    1980   24″ x 18″

Certainly my ability to draw like nearly no others around me helped fuel my hobbies, but talent alone cannot explain the sheer quantity of art pasted through out this blog. And this is but a small, small part of my output as a teenager.  The prolific outpouring of visual imagery for so many of my interests nearly insured that my skills would be honed and matured, even if as an outside/self taught hobbyist artist.

My interest in expression was not satiated with initial success within an art form,  I would constantly revisit themes – exploring, adding, manipulating in an obsessive way.  I could not stop at making one dungeon map, I was constantly creating new adventures for my friends to play within so that in the end scores of handmade encounters and visuals were produced.  This obsessive nature carried over into nearly all creative endeavors I engaged in as a teenager.  I would guess that art saved my life, for what would this enormous energetic outpouring typically fuel? Violence?  Dissidence? Frustration?

Thankfully art was a massive pressure release value for teenage anxieties.

Dungeons & Dragons Map    Donato Giancola     ~ 1983    24″ x 18″     hand drawn 1/4″ graph paper

Assessing my output as a professional artist, I can see that formative years as an illustrator in the mid 1990’s continued the productive level of creation I began in my teenage years and nurtured through my time at college. I was not exceptionally talented compared to the scores of artists working in the book cover and game industry, but rather believe much of my success has come from the tenacity to keep pushing through project after project, building new challenges into my portfolio, and attempting to be uninhibited in the types of content I seek to embrace.

I certainly stumbled many times with my rendering, style, and execution, but the large volume of output guaranteed a fair number of successes and nurtured confidence in my career.

When asked what is the best advice for artists, the answer is a simple one – be prolific.

I cannot teach talent, only help a bit in its development.

I cannot inspire an artist to fall passionately in love with their content, that can only come from the heart.

But what I have learned as a teacher working these past decades is that I can train and educate an artist how to be as prolific as possible – how to build upon their strengths, pry out their weaknesses, and bring challenges into their creative process so that they can mature their work ethic, and develop a high degree of confidence in their performance.

I have learned that building a stronger link between talent and passion through work ethic is the path to success as an artist.

Dungeons & Dragons Map    Donato Giancola     ~ 1985    8.5″ x 11″
Dungeons & Dragons Map    Donato Giancola     ~ 1985    8.5″ x 11″
Dungeons & Dragons Map    Donato Giancola     ~ 1985    8.5″ x 11″
Dungeons & Dragons Map    Donato Giancola     ~ 1985    8.5″ x 11″
Dungeons & Dragons Map    Donato Giancola     ~ 1985    8.5″ x 11″
Dungeons & Dragons Map    Donato Giancola     ~ 1985    8.5″ x 11″
Dungeons & Dragons Map    Donato Giancola     ~ 1985    8.5″ x 11″
Dungeons & Dragons Map    Donato Giancola     ~ 1985    8.5″ x 11″
Dungeons & Dragons Map    Donato Giancola     ~ 1985    8.5″ x 11″
Dungeons & Dragons Castle    Donato Giancola     ~ 1984    24″ x 18″     hand drawn 1/4″ graph paper
Dungeons & Dragons Map    Donato Giancola     ~ 1981    24″ x 18″     hand drawn 1/4″ graph paper
Dungeons & Dragons Castle    Donato Giancola     ~ 1984    24″ x 18″     hand drawn 1/4″ graph paper
Dungeons & Dragons Castle    Donato Giancola     ~ 1984    24″ x 18″     hand drawn 1/4″ graph paper
Dungeons & Dragons Map    Donato Giancola     ~ 1982    24″ x 18″     hand drawn 1/4″ graph paper
Dungeons & Dragons Castle    Donato Giancola     ~ 1983    24″ x 18″    hand drawn 1/4″ graph paper
Dungeons & Dragons Map    Donato Giancola     ~ 1983    24″ x 18″     hand drawn 1/4″ graph paper
Dungeons & Dragons Map    Donato Giancola     ~ 1982    24″ x 18″     hand drawn 1/4″ graph paper
Omega Corps Rules   Donato Giancola  and Vincent Schelzo   ~ 1983   
Star Wars-The Empire Strikes Back     Donato Giancola    1980   24″ x 18″
Star Wars-The Empire Strikes Back     Donato Giancola    1980   24″ x 18″
Star Wars-The Empire Strikes Back     Donato Giancola    1980   24″ x 18″
Star Wars-The Empire Strikes Back     Donato Giancola    1980   24″ x 18″
Star Wars-The Empire Strikes Back     Donato Giancola    1980   24″ x 18″
Star Wars-The Empire Strikes Back     Donato Giancola    1980   24″ x 18″
Star Wars-The Empire Strikes Back     Donato Giancola    1980   24″ x 18″