Inspired by Supernatural: Art by GioGui

We have so much talent in the Supernatural fandom! Fans draw, edit photos and videos, write fan fics, create costumes or props, make jewelry and much more. It’s time to showcase the #SPNFamily’s talent and ask the people behind the creations some questions!

Giovanna aka GioGui is the next artist I want to introduce to you.

We talked about how she got trapped in the Supernatural Fandom, her different drawing styles and so much more.

Let´s start with the interview!

Enjoy reading!

How and when did you get “trapped” in the Supernatural Fandom?

Ah, this is a great question! In 2017.

Before that, I watched some episodes from season 01 and I found it ok, lots of references to “The X Files’ (a show I loved so much) and urban legends and myths (I also love mythology) and all. But it did not catch me by that time, so I watched some episodes and stopped. After some time, a friend of mine told me to watch a little more, because she thought it was the kind of show I would love. I watched the entire season 1 and part of season 2. I loved the end of season 1, when we first saw the reapers in the hospital, while Dean was in coma, but again, it didn´t catch me. Good, but not my fave.

And so, in end of 2015, I was for the first time working on CCXP, our biggest comic con, here on Sao Paulo, Brazil, and Misha was one of the stars on the con. At that time, I (had) never heard about him, and I was curious about him, he was so nice and cute with everyone. So, I asked my friend about him, because I never saw an episode with him on the show (the same friend I talked about before) and she told me to watch a little more. Ok, so I was curious again and decided to watch more. Also, in CCXP I received a job offer, so 2016 was a busy year, I had to go back to Rio de Janeiro, where I was living and working, quit my job, end all the projects I was in that studio, move to Sao Paulo and start a new life and job. And so the entire year went without me to go back to Supernatural.

Finally, in 2017, I decided to watch it again. I was working in a personal project at home, a comic book, and I first started watching again the episodes I´ve already watched, while I was painting the comic pages. I watched entire seasons 1 and 2 again and so I went through all the remaining seasons. I loved season 04 and all the angels lore. I watched all the seasons in about 2 months. And this time, I got trapped. Really trapped! 😀

What does the Supernatural Fandom means to you?

SPN Fandom means a lot to me! It´s a great, funny, sometimes chaotic, crazy, and always supportive big family. And also so creative!

It came into my life in a good moment, I was living in another State, in a new city, one of the biggest cities in the world, where I didn´t know anyone, feeling a bit alone, in a new job, in a new moment in my life, and having some difficult moments and almost falling in depression crises. And I found amazing people and friendship in the middle of the turmoil!

I just feel sad this fandom have so many factions, haters and intern fights, for meaningless reasons, when it was supposed to reunited people, to be a group of people put together by a common thing, a love for a tv show, an entertainment. But all families has his fights and crises! Nothing is perfect!

I found some great friends here, people I now know for just one or two years, but we look like long term friends! I talked to this friends everyday, more than I talk to some friends I know for decades! I just wish I could met them in person, once most of them I can only met and talk online.

Also I found so many artists and creative people! So, here I have friendship, support, love and fun among these people! It´s a great, funny and amazing family!

How and when did you started with drawing?

Well, I´ve been drawing all my life

I was a little girl who used to take the pencils and draw on everything, from my dolls (I really used to prefer draw on their faces and clothes, instead of play with them, lol) to the house´s furniture and walls… One day, my mom hide the pencils, to stop me. And I took her lipsticks and painted the bathroom walls and door with them… ^_^() So my parents started to gave me a lot of paper to keep the house safe from me, lol!

So, drawing was, always, my biggest hobby. Most of the children love to draw and at early ages everyone has similar drawings. But most of people stop drawing in some point of the childhood. I never did it.

And I grew up wanting to work as an artist. Well, because family, I didnt study Arts, but Psychology, and for a while I was part working as a psychologist, and part working as a freelancer artist. And always drawing at home for fun! But soon as I became independent, I came back to the University to study Fine Arts, and leave behind the other profession. I worked with comics, animations and, for the last 4 years, I´ve worked creating illustrations for games.

Drawing fanarts was always a natural thing to me, as I´m a really nerd person! Soon as I start to love something – a book, a TV show, a comic book – I start to draw the characters. Same happened in Supernatural, I watched the entire show from seasons 01 to beginning of season 13 in the end of 2017 and a little time after, I was working in some images for postcards and started to sketch the characters of the show on my sketchbook, using the same style I was using for the cards, while relaxing. Sometime after that, I finally made a entire artwork, colored and finished. And sometime after that, I posted it online for the first time.

What pencils, papers, colors and/or brushes do you use?

Oh, I love art supplies, I have SOME favorites.

For drawings, I do prefer mechanical pencils, more often I use size 0.5 with 2B leds. Colored pencils I do prefer the Caran Dache watercolor pencils. I don´t have a favorite paper to draw with pencils and pens, usually I have a normal 90g bristol paper, or polen paper sketchbooks!

Talking about pens, most of times I use brush pens, I have some brush pens from japanese and chinese brands, like Sakura Pigma, they are my favorite to draw!

Also I love chinese ink, to work with it in fountain pens or with fude brushes!

I also love markers, I have some STA watercolor markers, and Copic. For them I usually prefer a paper around 200gs.

And I love watercolors, for this I use Archers paper, Satin or Fine grain, 300 gs. Schminckle is my favorite watercolor inks, but also I use Winsor & Newton. Brushes, I have a lot, and I´m used to use small ones, even because I usually paint in small sizes. From 0 to 12, most of times I´m using 4 – 6 sizes, some with natural marta or squirrel fur and some sintetic fur.

I also love to draw with conté pencils, specially sanguina, and charcoal pencils, and recently I started to play with charcoal powder. I also paint with gouach and acrylics, but there´s been a time since I used this last ones!

And also I love to make experiments, like painting with coffe, tea… I have a portrait of Misha done with Black and Hibiscus tea.

Speaking about digital brushes, I usually like to try some downloaded brushes, but most of time I use the most commom brushes in Photoshop, just customized in the Brush Settings!

Which program to you use for your digital drawings? Can you recommend a program/tablet?

For digital art, I use Paint Tool Sai, Corel Painter and Photoshop, more often I use Photoshop and all my digital SPN fanarts were made on it.

I can recommend them all, because they are really good programs. Photoshop is a huge tool, full of options and resources. But if you want to save money and work in a not-so-fast computer, Paint Tool Sai is an amazing tool and the digital watercolor tool is great! Its an amazing software.

I use wacom tablets at work and at home, and I also highly recommend them. Some friends have experienced Huion tablets, too, and they all have said is so good as wacom.

What was the first picture you draw and the first Supernatural related one? Would love to see your first ones from traditional and digital art.

Funny, the first Supernatural art I made was a Misha, once I drew him on paper in my sketchbook and colored it on my computer. It was a chibi version of Castiel rescuing Dean from Hell.

My second one was totally digital, a portrait of Castiel with a unicorn´s horn.

And my third one was a traditional art, a watercolor painting of Castiel and Gabriel, made as a gift for a friend.

After, I started to make more and more Supernatural art, and post them on Tumblr and Twitter. Most of my Supernatural art are digital arts, but I have some chinese ink portraits and some watercolor paintings, too.

Seems like you have different drawings styles. Can you explain why and with what you started and what your favorite is?

Yes, I have. Because I like different styles and also, working as an illustrator, sometimes I need to switch styles, once sometimes I´m working in a child´s book, sometimes I´m working in a game for adults.

Also, as I worked as an animator and comic artist, I was learning and getting influence from different styles and artists.

So, I can draw in a cute, fluff, chibi style, or a cartoon style – like in an animation – or a comic style – a little in the middle between a cartoon and a realist style – or in a totally realistic style.

I love chibis, specially because it´s the faster, so I can draw quickly if I´m having just a few free time. They also are cute and usually everyone loves them. But I also love the realistic, they took quite a time do be done, but you can make so much more strong images and express much more in them!

So, realistic are my faves, but depends on my mood and also my time which style I choose. Or the message, some drawings works better in THIS or THAT style, so I choose that, even if I choose more realistic and this will take me a little more time to complete the image.

In my Supernatural fanarts, I started in chibi style, because I was sketching things quickly in my sketchbook, drawing them without references. Soon after, I made a realistic portrait of Castiel while watching an episode to have the right references. And until now I keep going like that, switching styles…

I always love to see the progress people make with their art. Do you like to share a then & now picture with us?
It always motivates me and maybe other too.

Sure! I don´t have many old old pictures here, but I found some interesting ones to make comparisons with some more recent!

Here I have a chibi picture of a anime character done exactly in 2009 (and funny think at that time Supernatural was already been aired for 4 years) and even if you consider the fact it´s a sketch, so it´s not finished, it´s quite diferent from the chibis of my first Supernatural art, they have better composition, pose, much more details and more of my style, less than a generic chibi drawing.

Also, we can notice that the chibis of Castiel and Dean (pic above ~he first one she draw~) have very close faces, eyes and heads, just some details, like the hair and clothes, besides the color, to identify the characters.

And also, 2 years late, in october, 2019, I made this halloween chibis and they also shows more changes, the three characters are a little more distinguished between them, once now I tried to incorporate more of the actor´s characteristics, like eyes shapes, a large forehead for Sam, etc.

And for traditional portraits, here I have a watercolor portrait from 10 years ago, and a watercolor portrait of Dean, made last year. Even being a black and white portrait, it shows much more details and better rendering.

Can you explain how/why you choose the pics you draw. What inspires you?

Ideas and inspirations can come from a lot of fonts.

Some of my Supernatural artworks are commissioned works, so someone asked me for the art, with all the details. It´s the case of the Comic Book Cover

or the portrait of Castiel as a Hussar Warrior.

Both of them requests by winner bidders of Fic Facers 2019 Auction. I also have many artworks created for Fic Facers, like the dancing chibis from last year.

I have some that were made in Suptoberart, a Supernatural version of Inktober – a online challenge for artists, where you have a list of words as prompts for every day of October and must create a art and post it on social media. So, we have a single word and we have to create something based on it. I try to catch the first idea that came to my mind reading the word, many times is just a reference to a scene from the show, like “water”, who reminded me the scene where Dean finds Castiel on Purgatory, season 08.

And sometimes I have totally silly ideas, like “fire”, that reminded me of the scene with the demon Crowley in the car in fire in Good Omens, and I immediately had the idea of mix the “it´s fine” meme, the Good Omens reference and the Crowley from Supernatural.

“Kansas” reminded me of the song, Carry on my Wayward son, from Kansas, and I couldn´t help but think about Team Free Will in a karaoke night…

Sometimes my ideas are simple inspired by episodes, like portraits of one of the characters in a specific shot that caught my attention because of a beautiful light or composition, or whatever.

Or more parodies about scenes. Like my versions for the season 14 gag reel

or my picture about the season 15 first episode.

Or my arts for “Squirrelnatural”, based on the small detail of Chuck telling that there´s a universe where everyone are squirrels… I tried to resist, but after days thinking about that I started to sketch squirrel versions of our characters on the middle of work and it took control over me! 😀

Some ideas came while doing other things. My “burning art”, for example, with Sam, Dean and Castiel like sculptures of stone and lava, just came to me while I was seing some pictures of volcanos and lava while doing a research on Google Images.

So, ideas comes from all kind of sources…

How long does it take you to finish a portrait/drawing? Traditional and digital?

That’s depend on technique and how much details I want on the picture.

It can took me about 2 to 8 hours to finish, little more or less, according if it´s a simple black and white work, or a colored one, if it has many more details, scenery, if I started it with everything already in mind or if I will experiment poses, details and create variations before choose the final pose, etc.

As fanarts are something I do in my (few) free time, usually at night after arrived from the office and finish all the home tasks or freelance works, I usually make my digital arts in more than one day, first day sketching ideas until find the exactly pose I want. Next day I clean the lines (my sketches sometimes are a total mess and a great example of the chaos itself) and work in the lineart. Usually this took me about one hour or 2, if there are lots of details (like a full detailed wing with all the feathers, spreaded – or 6 wings…) And next day or days, I work in the colors.

To watercolor paintings, I usually spent some hours collecting references, drawing, preparing paper. And the painting took me about 2 – 4 hours.

Not sure if you can decide that, but what is your favorite picture you draw, and of course why? If you can´t two or three favorites are also fine.

My favorite from my Supernatural arts is my Renascensse Castiel. This one was totally inspired by a tumblr post from Magnificent Winged Beast, comparing a pose of Misha in season 13, episode 09, and the cherubins in Rafael Sanzio´s painting, the Madona Sistina. I asked her permission to use her idea.

Also I like one of my recents, Final Ride, made for the final season premiere.

Took me some time to find the poses and all, but I enjoyed a lot the work on this one!

Did any of the stars saw your drawings? If yes, how was their reaction?

Yes, I made a video painting a portrait of Misha, and posted it and the painting on my Twitter. He saw and liked it!

Also Ruth Connell saw the one I made for Rowena Queen of Hell, after episode 08 from season 15, and she liked it, too, and retweeted it! 🙂

Are you creating other Art besides your drawings?

Yes, besides Supernatural fanarts and my official job, I also draw other kinds of stuff , for freelance works or personagel projects, like my comic books.

And I also love modelling in clay and wood carving, I´m planning to go back to this this year, there was a long time since I last used this techniques and last year, on GISH, I worked with them again. And it was a pleasure!

Some Artists are open for commissions, what about you?

Yes, I am open to comissions, but not all time. It´s depends on how much freelance works I have in the moment (and how much free time I have). Usually people ask me about it and, if I´m too busy, I tell them that I´m not taking new requests, but will be in some days and ask them to write to me again in that time!

What are your next projects?

Right now, taking advantage of a little more free time as I gave myself two months without freelance works as a New Year gift, I´m working in some fanarts for fanfics.

I took part in some big bangs, where you are paired with an author and must create artwors to illustrate her/his fanfiction! I´m creating a 3 page comic for one of them and some more drawings for other 2 bangs. They will being posted in about 1 or 2 monts!

And also, if I have ideas for fanarts, I try to work on them between projects, like in my lunch time at work or between my current arts for the fics.

Also, I´m always wanting to create comic strips to Supernatural, but I need more free time! 😀

Is there anything else you like to share with the fans? What more would you like to tell us about your art or yourself?

I would like to send my huge THANK YOU to all the people who came to my profiles and leave messages, for all the kindness and friendship I have find in this fandom! And also my appreciation for this creative fandom and all the great artists I found here!