ASUKA: Rob Schamberger Newsletter 01MAY22

But don't let my glad expression give you the wrong impression.

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Don't share this image until after 12PM CST. This is a perk for newsletter readers only. Be cool. Don't ruin it for everyone else. 

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Hi. My name's Rob Schamberger. I'm that guy who paints rasslers. And other stuff. Just like Pagliacci did, I try to keep my surface hid.

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WORDS  

Asuka is one of my very favorite subjects to paint. There’s something about her energy, her look, something about everything with her that translates perfectly to my approach. With the new approaches and tools I’ve been using lately with watercolors especially I was excited to see how that would translate to the Empress of Tomorrow Asuka.

I’d say it went pretty well.

With this painting in particular I wanted to play around with light and its relationship to color in particular. How it works with the surfaces of her face, mask, hair and hand and how each of them exist within different sources of colored light. It’s well outside of my comfort zone, but just like no one is ready for Asuka I didn’t want to come in and do something that didn’t push me to be a better artist.

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ICYMI, here's last week's Canvas 2 Canvas episode. Tomorrow's will go up on WWE's YouTube channel at 11AM CST!

UPCOMING VIDEOS  

• Edge

• Select Series Lady Legends Wave 2022

• Rhea Ripley

• Drew McIntyre

• Vader

Card subject to change.

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Hundreds of prints and paintings at Schamberger Labs!
Rob and Jason Arnett's novella Rudow Can't Fail!
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Shirts and prints at WWE Shop.
Signed prints at WWE Auction.
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Twitter
Instagram
YouTube

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WHAT I LIKED LAST WEEK  

Wednesday I finished up reading the Gotham Central Omnibus by Greg Rucka, Ed Brubaker, Michael Lark and friends. I read these 40 issues as they originally serialized and loved them then, but man reading all of this in one big chunk was a tremendous experience. It transcends being a police procedural set in the world of Batman and instead is more akin to Homicide: Life on the Streets or The Wire with a few horrific cameos from The Joker and Mr Freeze. The evolution of the Renee Montoya character in particular is a wonderful experience.

That said, it’s still wacky that after this book Crispus Allen went on to become The Spectre but the evolution of Montoya into The Question does work with the foundation set here. That sentence reminds me that shared superhero universes are nuts sometimes.

Arrowsmith volume one by Kurt Busiek and Carlos Pacheco is another gorgeous collection allowing me to revisit a book I’d read when it first serialized and am incredibly impressed reading again now. Busiek was doing exceptional work at that time with this and Astro City, like above and beyond what he’d done before on The Avengers. But adding that energy to a master of the form in Pacheco and then doing a reimagining of World War I as an alternate history fantasy epic was incredible. I’m excited to see the sequel they’re working on now once it’s completed. Sure to be amazing.

Telepaths volume one by J Michael Straczynski and Steve Epting exceeded the high expectation I had for this duo working on a high concept like this. An unusual solar flare hits Earth, giving 10% of the population telepathic powers at the same time. The book then explores how this changes all of society from a variety of angles and brings it to an early climax that Straczynski says is just an inciting event like the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand, setting the stage for a global upheaval no one is ready for.

I mean, -I’m- ready for that book.

Epting’s a master craftsman and delivers the quiet moments as deftly as the truly explosive moments. JMS has explored telepathy most notably in Babylon 5 and Sense8 but never on a scale like this. I’m hooked.

Last Sunday I built the LEGO Bonsai Tree set. I’d wanted to do this one for a while and it was a ton of fun. What’s really cool is that it comes with both the blooming stage of the tree and the green leaves, so I can change it up seasonally. It’s amazing what the team there dreams up.

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YOU GOOD?  

The lilacs are opening, the red leaves of the Japanese maples are blazing and the pleasant breezes are blowing through our open windows. The house plants will get to move outside in a few days and friend, I love the spring time.

There’s cool business stuff happening but in all honesty the loveliness of a calm spring breeze is giving me more life right now than anything else at the moment.

At first it was getting on the other side of a hard winter, but now it’s all about settling in and enjoying the moments that this weather affords.

Love you more,
Rob

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Current progress on my major new painting of Charlotte Flair. Paid tier members will find out what’s going on with this!

EXCLUSIVE PAID SUBSCRIBER CONTENT

Paid subscribers this week will get an exclusive 25% off discount code for prints, a list of the coming week’s signed prints at WWE Auction, and 24 hour advance access for the original Asuka painting. Oh and the debut of our new weekly show where you get to see the process for an exclusive major Charlotte Flair painting! WE ARE GO FOR PAYWALL.