In this installment of FANGORIA Studios' Artist to Artist series, Fango contributor and horror artist Tess Givnish sits down with painter JoAnne McGrath to discuss the art of horror, the joy of hands-on creativity, and the collaborative process behind McGrath’s first-ever film poster for Luke Barnett‘s horror comedy short Goodbye, Monster. From the intricate details of hand-painted artwork to the practical effects and creature designs that inspire their work, the two artists explore what makes horror such a rich visual playground. Along the way, they reflect on finding your own creative path, embracing new mediums, and the importance of putting your work out into the world and finding purpose.
The Art of Horror and the Horror of Comfort Zones
FANGORIA: This was your first film poster, right, JoAnne? What was the biggest difference for you thinking about somebody else's creative work versus your work for yourself?
JoAnne McGrath: One thing is nice. Sometimes I do like the parameters. You're not going to go off into left field. You're not stuck with too many creative decisions. I was given, this is the character, this is the vibe color scheme-wise. So I didn't have to come up with a lot of decisions.
Where I put my piece into this was just in our conversation, I'm like, “I'm thinking a little of this and a little of this.” We looked at some old posters and saw warm tones to cool tones and what represented the good guys and what represented the bad guys or the omniscient thing or whatever, ominous thing.
And it was a collaboration in figuring that out. And usually when it's me, I'm it. I'm the one making all the decisions, making all the color choices, making any kind of choice I would have to make and even just what I'm painting.
Tess Givnish: The poster is gorgeous. It's so beautiful. I was watching your video of you painting it. That just feels so… did you get total creative freedom?
JoAnne: So it was really lucky because Luke Barnett, who's the creator, he's the monster in it; he wrote it and is, first of all, a very nice person. But Armen [Aghaeian] connected me with him, and we had a conversation, and I had the initial nerves that you get, like, I'm going to talk to the client and see what they want, and not everybody has that visual, here's my sketch, here's what I'm thinking, and they can't always make that leap.
And so I said, “I'm going to draw a quick sketch,” because we discussed the ideas of what he was going for and what I understood his ideas to be. And for the first time in my life, I understood completely what he was saying. He understood completely what I was saying. I'm like, “This feels so easy.”
And I sent him a sketch, and he was so cute because he texted back maybe two hours later like, “I'm so sorry I was in a thing. I can't believe I didn't text right back. This is great.” And he loved it just from the sketch.
And I kind of barely checked in with him, which was nice. There were a few things; once I got the go-ahead, I had a question or two about the monster. And then I'm like, “I don't want to bug him too much because I kind of want to do the big reveal.”
But it was so fun to do that piece.
Tess: I was so impressed with your layout, the fitting scenes, and the little details. I feel like I like to do illustrations of movie posters, but I don't know if they translate necessarily to being an actual movie poster. Did you know when you were painting it that the text would go in the middle?
JoAnne: Yeah, we had discussed that. So if you look at the actual painting without the text on it, there's not really a cavern in the middle, but there's a divide between the top and the bottom and the good and the evil and all that. And then there's just sort of a darkness that we made that really just looks like in Photoshop, you would be just blending things into each other.
But it's funny too, because there are things. You look at it, and you're like, “I know what I would do to this in Photoshop, but I have to paint that.” And your brain's like, “Figure that out.”
Tess: I was zooming in on them. There's such an art to painting something that is still recognizable, but not… You could have painted everything in the scene in full detail, but then the poster would've been so busy. So the fact that you painted it, that I could still tell they were band posters, but they were slightly blurry. That's funny you said that because I was like, “Wow, that's cool.”
JoAnne: Aw, thank you. Thank you. Yeah, it was super, super fun. One of my favorite compliments that I got was, because they did a little blast on Instagram, and I think it was the production designer from the film who set up all that stuff, and she was like, “Oh my God, it's so exciting to see my work in miniature,” I think is how she said it.
And I'm like, “I just love that,” because somebody else did take the time to create that whole scene. Sure, I painted the painting, but I'm just painting a scene that somebody else set up, a monster that somebody else designed. So I feel like it's layers of other people's art just being represented in this piece of art. So I'm happy to be a cog in that machine.
Tess: Yeah, that's such a cool way to put it, because I feel like that goes back to when I was saying that I liked sculpting the creatures because you're just thinking about the people that had to make those creatures, and that's so cool. I loved that, I was zooming up on the hand, the monster's hand was so satisfying looking. Hands are hard, so.
JoAnne: That was eight hours, that part, that hand, because I was like, ah. And it's funny because I don't know if it made it into the final video. My partner was filming a lot for me, or I had a little… I had a time-lapse camera going when I didn't need my phone for reference, but so often I needed my phone for reference.
It gets uglier before it gets better. There is one or two stages of that hand where you're like, “What are you even painting? That is not going to work.” And then in the end you're like, “It worked.”
Tess: I feel like that all the time where I'm painting like, “This just looks awful. How is this going to turn out?” And then you have to start thinking like, every single time I think that, it does end up turning out. So you just got to trust the process. It'll eventually, yeah.
JoAnne: That's the nice thing about, like, the longer you do this, you understand that part. That doesn't necessarily always translate to a client, which is funny, which is part of why I think behind-the-scenes videos are hard because you're like, “No, I'm going to mess up a couple times.” And people are like, “People love to see that.” I'm like, “No.”
Tess: No, people will be like, “That looks bad.”
JoAnne: And like, “What is she doing? That's not even in the movie.”
Tess: And then the whole now, in this day and age, having to film and photograph everything you're working on to show it. And it's like, “Okay, now I have to show these really vulnerable stages of my work.”
Horror as an Art Form
FANGORIA: What draws you to horror as an artist?
Tess: I grew up doing art. My mom is very creative. She just always was crafting and working on things. So I feel like I kind of followed in her footsteps. And then in high school I decided I wanted to go to art school, so I ended up going to college for art, and I majored in painting.
And it was funny; it took a couple of years after college to be like, “Okay, well, I got a degree in this. Let's make a career out of it.” So I started just doing commissions here and there. And I feel like once I started making art about my interests, that's when it started to really be fulfilling career-wise and for me.
JoAnne: I have to say that's one thing I love about this genre is that you can get into the gross parts and you're like, “Oh, it looks so cool.”
Tess: Yeah, right. Because then I'm just thinking about whenever people are like, “Oh, how do you watch that?” And I'm like, I feel like I'm watching these movies and I'm seeing the behind-the-scenes of, okay, how can we make this blood spray? I love the practical effects.
So then when I'm making dolls, I made the Smile movie; there's this entity in it, and it's all practical in the movie. So when I was sculpting it, I was like, “Oh my gosh, they really sculpted this creature and made it in real life.”
So I'm making it thinking that this really exists. It wasn't CGI, and just the horror genre is so inspiring that way.
JoAnne: It really is. It's so funny too because I definitely, I sort of feel more appreciated as an artist right now in this era of like, anything but AI. And I think people appreciate it more. Even the people that don't know the process that you go through or how long something takes, they're just impressed that it's a real thing that somebody did with their hands, and it feels good to be seen in that way at this point.
Tess: Yeah. And I think that's such a good reason why you were hired for the poster. I feel like you don't see hand-painted posters that often anymore, and so it really stands out that you could see the human behind it.
FANGORIA: I love how it came out. I was talking to Armen, before I ever spoke to you, I was talking to Armen about how much I loved the Chiaroscuro elements he used with the contrasting colors to use for depth instead of using grayscale.
JoAnne McGrath: Yeah! I picked up a tip because of this world we live in, with every artist sharing online. And there's one girl I follow, Courtney, who paints the most beautiful light. She paints light beautifully. She does two things, and she talked about how white is never white. It's like it's yellow or it's lavender or it's something because she's using the contrasting colors on the color wheel too. So if you want to make a purple pop, you're going to use a yellow light kind of thing. And it's barely — it's white, white, yellow — but it's yellow, and it makes it look even brighter than if you had painted it white, which was interesting. And then the other thing is she doesn't use any black, so there's no black on that painting anywhere. All that black is made with other colors that aren't black.
And I loved it, and I felt it empowering. That was the first time I'm like, I was learning as I was painting. I'm like, “Wow, this is working. This is really working.” Can I tell you the most intimidating thing, which wound up being easy and worked right off the bat, is the light coming from behind the head of the monster that's up in the corner. There's just light.
And I was like, “If I mess this up.” It was so much stress, and I figured it out, and I busted it out, and I did it, and I did it in one stroke, and I was like, “I can't believe that worked.” I tried it, and it worked, and I was so happy. And then that's one of those ones like, now walk away. Never look at that part of the painting again because if you go to try to tweak anything, just leave it, just leave it, so.
Finding Your Own Creative Path
JoAnne: Now, do you have any big things that you still want to do with your art that you're like, “Here's a project I'd like to work on”?
Tess: I think a movie poster would be really cool, but I feel like I need to get a little bit more practice putting my brain in that 2D realm. I feel like the design of it, I feel like there's a little bit of a graphic design brain that goes into movie poster design, even if you're traditionally painting it, like the layout and everything.
JoAnne: For me, one of the things I've… So I like to dip into all sorts of styles, and this is one of the things I love about the era that we're in: you can watch a video online and be like, “Oh, I want to learn that technique or this new type.” I love doing that. So I'm one of those artists that doesn't have a set style, and I don't want to get a set style. I still want to try everything.
But what I've never done, and I would like to do, is create a collection so that when a gallery or when a shop needs a wall full of art, I have a collection, a cohesive collection.
Tess: I totally resonate with you just being able to sit down and do it, because I feel like the mindset that I'm in right now, at least, is everything has to be monetized. If I'm spending my time creating something, it has to have a payoff definitely.
JoAnne: It's good to be monetized, though. Don't knock yourself for that because that's a challenge I face. I'm like, “Got to get monetized, got to remember,” because even like filming the behind-the-scenes thing, that's part of it. But yeah, it is tough. When I think of it, I think of it as paintings I have to do, and then my paintings.
Tess: Yeah.
JoAnne: And even though my paintings could eventually be paintings that sell, and probably will, because they'll have some passion in them. But it's like, for instance, I did the poster; that was a painting I had to do happily.
Tess: Yeah, it's the life of an artist.
JoAnne: Yeah, truly, truly.
FANGORIA: What do you want people to know about you as an artist?
JoAnne: For me, I think for the longest time I was trying to find my style because in the early days it's like, you've got to find a style, you've got to have a niche. People don't know who you are as an artist. And it was constantly trying to figure that out.
But if I paint one thing too long, I feel very bored and not inspired anymore. And so I just finally let that go. I'm like, “That's just not who I am. I'm this artist that does 20 different types of art, and that's fine.” And I realized there are people that appreciate all of it.
I like that I get to do different stuff all the time, and I'm going to keep doing different stuff all the time.
Tess: I relate to that. My niche is my genre, but a million different mediums keeps me, what's it, my brain going? The gears turning.
JoAnne: The wheel’s spinning.
Tess: The wheel’s spinning.
FANGORIA: And Tess, what would you want people to know?
Tess: I think the biggest thing I've learned is just doing it. I think that there was that gap in between college and when I started doing art again, that I was like, “What is the point of this? What am I going to do with it? This is so hard.”
And I think creating and putting your stuff out there and meeting people. I met FANGORIA through horror conventions, and I think you just never know what's on the other side of just doing it, and posting it, and going to conventions, and meeting new people, and putting your art out there.
I was doing pet portraits for years, and I obviously love doing it. It helped me start my career, but then I was like, “Oh, but what if I just painted something that I wanted to paint?” And I was like, “Who knows what will come of it?” And it was actually, it wasn't even painting; it was drawing these horror dolls, and it was just something that I did randomly on whatever day.
And I was just sitting in my bed drawing, and I posted it, and it changed my life. Now it's what I do for a living. And I think just if anyone is looking into getting into art or is passionate about horror and whatever, it's filmmaking, it's whatever, I think just do it. You never know what'll come of it. Who knows? Maybe it doesn't turn into anything. You pivot. I just think that's what I would want people to know and what I've learned.
Joanne McGrath’s Favorite Horror Recs
- Poltergeist is my classic go-to film. I think it was the first scary movie I saw in the theater. I still remember when someone’s soda spilled in the theater. That’s how clear the memory is. And the maggot scene still replays in my head whenever I see raw meat.
- The Legend of Sleepy Hollow (From The Adventures of Ichabod Crane and Mr. Toad) – The Walt Disney version. Hear me out. My first love (art-wise) was animation. So I LOVE animated films. I rewatch this one every year, and I still get nervous for that shaky, skinny Ichabod when he heads off into the forest.
- The Cleaning Lady (2018) by Alexis Kendra and Jon Knautz. Ok yo be fair. This is one of my favorites because I am in it. It was so fun to completely immerse myself in such a despicable, dark character. It’s the story of a young woman, Shelly, whose face was severely burned as a child. I play Colleen, her mom, whose evil intentions are the reason Shelly winds up permanently scarred and with a fair amount of trauma. This trauma plays out in some serious violent justice being served.
Tess Givnish’s Favorite Horror Recs
- I recently watched the original Fright Night for the first time and I loved it. Vampires hold a special place in my heart (Twilight came out during very pivotal years of my life), so watching a movie about a good old-fashioned sexy vampire moving into a small town was a ton of fun. I then went on to watch the remake immediately after, and that one also was a hit for me!
- A movie that will never not be a favorite is Jennifer's Body. It's my first answer when people ask about my favorite movies. Just like vampires, the movie came out when I first started to really appreciate movies and going to the theater and that experience has been a core memory. I think I just enjoy watching beautiful people rip people apart with their teeth. And a “good for her” movie never goes unappreciated in this house.
- I love all of Jordan Peele's filmography so far, but my favorite has been Nope. The creature design alone of Jean Jacket makes it a top movie of mine. The core of the movie being about spectacle and then creating a monster so beautiful you can't help but want to look at it, what a cool movie.
- As for 2026 horror releases, there have been so many amazing ones, but one film I loved this year that I think deserves more attention has been Leviticus. I left the theater and haven't stopped thinking about it since. It's haunting and heavy and not your typical horror movie, but I think that's what makes it so special. If you missed this one in theaters, I definitely recommend watching it!
GOODBYE, MONSTER continues to screen at festivals worldwide. Keep an eye on FANGORIA Studios for an event near you.
