ALBA FYRE & ISLA DAWN: Rob Schamberger Newsletter 09JUL23
Fire, smoke she is a rising, fire, oh smoke stack lightning.
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Hi. My name's Rob Schamberger. I'm that guy who paints rasslers. And other stuff. Fire woman, you’re to blame.
WORDS
For this Alba Fyre and Isla Dawn painting, I thought it’d be interesting to really lean into what I could do stylistically with a fire theme. I did a tonal underpainting with black, white and grey, then went over it with yellow, orange and red acrylic paint thinned out with glazing medium. This kept the energy of the underpainting while bringing in those lush fire-inspired colors. I then added some white highlights and some violet to give it some rich shadows, and finished it with some floating embers to give a sense of depth and movement.
Fyre and Dawn are both new to the scene in WWE but I feel like they’re going to be a force to be reckoned with for years to come. This is my first painting of them, but I’m sure it’s far from the last.
LGTBQ ATHLETES
As a personal project, I thought it’d be fun to do a series of 10 paintings focused on various notable LGTBQ athletes being awesome within their sports. Once I’m done I’ll find an appropriate place to show them at.
ABOVE: Greg Louganis, ink and watercolor on 9” x 12” watercolor paper
BELOW: Megan Rapinoe, ink, watercolor and paint marker on 12” x 9” watercolor paper
The online discourse around folks like them and I can be hard to deal with, let alone all of the legislation being introduced and often becoming laws against us. So I’m doing a fun project to celebrate some excellence.
ICYMI, here's last week's Canvas 2 Canvas episode. Today’s episode will go up on WWE's YouTube channel at 3PM CST!
UPCOMING VIDEOS
7/23 - Matt Riddle: The idea and execution for this one came to me fully and I had to do it. Get ready for something wild.
8/6 - Pretty Deadly
Card subject to change.
Hundreds of prints and paintings at Schamberger Labs!
Rob and Jason Arnett's novella Rudow Can't Fail!
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WHAT I LIKED THE PAST COUPLE WEEKS
Yesterday morning I finished reading the Tom Strong Compendium by Alan Moore, Chris Sprouse and friends, collecting the whole series. This was maybe my fourth time reading the series through and I somehow enjoy it even more now. Around the time of the launch of the America’s Best Comics line, Moore wrote an editorial about how he had deconstructed the superhero genre with Watchmen and now he was putting them back together with Tom Strong, Promethea, Top Ten and Tomorrow Stories. This along with the other books Wildstorm was publishing at the time are probably my favorite time in comics and golly it was a blast revisiting this. Full of joy, wonder and beauty. There’s also several issues made by a who’s who of other creators like Brian K Vaughn, Ed Brubaker, Michael Moorcock, Jerry Ordway, John Paul Leon, Paul Gulacy, Duncan Fegredo and so many more who all knock it out of the park.
I was sick for the whole week a couple weeks ago and had plenty of time to watch shows. One that I had missed out on but am now fully into is Joe Pickett on Paramount Plus. It’s really strongly written and the female cast are especially great. Listen, it’s got some of the worst CGI this side of the first season of Babylon 5 and a lot of the male actors are miscast at best, but it’s a very watchable show with some strong writing. Julianna Guill as Marybeth Pickett is the highlight of the show for me personally and I’d almost say the show would work better if it were named after her, from a purely psychological level.
The American Gladiators documentary Muscles and Mayhem on Netflix was dang fun. I was OBSESSED with this show as a kid but in that pre-internet age I knew nothing more than what I saw on TV. It’s a naturally wild story about people chasing their dreams, not knowing what to do when they got them nor how to handle the corporations exploiting them, and the price that comes with all of it. It’s not comprehensive and maybe not totally accurate from what I’ve read, but it speaks a lot of truth to what it was like for the human beings who portrayed the gladiators.
Katy and I got obsessed and watched all of Love & Death over the past couple weeks. Based on the true story of Candy, played by Elizabeth Olson, a married woman in Texas who has an affair with a married man and ends up killing his wife with an axe. I mean, other stuff happens, but there’s definitely some axe murdering going down. And it has the absolute wildest ‘where are they now’ text at the end of the finale that utterly SHOOK Katy and I.
I really wish he was photogenic.
YOU GOOD?
Not much to report from my end. Katy and I were sick for a week two weeks ago, got better, had a low-key holiday at home to be with the cats during the fireworks, and not much else to say. I kind of just painted and did my best to enjoy that.
Communications are still going along with WWE to get everything back up on WWE Shop. We’re at a point where it’s all on their side of the court and just waiting for it to happen, so I’m continuing to make new art until it’s all live again. Could be tomorrow, could be…some time later. Feel free to keep supporting Schamberger Labs in the meantime so that I can keep the lights on.
What else?
Tikka’s at that male adolescent kitten stage of starting to get a little aggressive so we’re working in positive ways to set boundaries with him about when he’s going too far. I’m seeing progress with that already and we’ll get there with him, it’s just taking time and my legs look like I’ve been in a barbed wire death match against Terry Funk and Sabu. He thinks he’s playing and I can’t meet his aggression with more aggression. So at first I’ll try to give him a toy to play with. If that doesn’t work, we have one of those distance toys that looks like a fishing rod so that he can play but further away. If those fail, I have to instead put him on the floor or in the worst circumstances, just get up and leave the room. This way, he doesn’t get more aggressive over time and instead reinforces that there are acceptable ways to play as well as unacceptable.
He’s a good little dude and a real sweetheart, but sometimes too rambunctious as all kittens can be. I’m excited to see what kind of cat he grows up to be. He and Kima are actively playing now, too and that’s great for both of them as well as Katy and I. A much happier energy in the house now for sure.
Love you more,
Rob
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