BRET HART V SHAWN MICHAELS: Rob Schamberger Newsletter 26MAR23
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Hi. My name's Rob Schamberger. I'm that guy who paints rasslers. And other stuff. Strange but not a stranger, I’m an ordinary guy burning down the house.
WORDS
My latest Wrestling Landscape painting is all about the epic Iron Man Match between Bret Hart and Shawn Michaels at WrestleMania XII! I spent about three months working on this and I couldn’t be prouder of the results.
I took a very deliberate pace with this (kinda like the match itself, now that I think about it!) and put in the work needed for each portion, regardless of the time it took. The back wall took a day, the crowd took several days, heck, the hearts on Shawn’s gear took three hours alone. I just worked on each part for as long as they needed to get it to look the way I wanted it to. I’m especially happy with the depth the piece has and how much Bret and Shawn pop from the background.
It’s the most technically proficient acrylic painting I’ve made and it pushed me far beyond my limits, forcing me to learn new techniques as well as making me slow down and enjoy the creation of it all. I don’t know if any of that comes through to the viewer and it’s quite okay if it doesn’t but I do hope it gives you a moment of happiness to see it.
ICYMI, here's last week's Canvas 2 Canvas episode. Tomorrow's episode will go up on WWE's YouTube channel at 11AM CST!
UPCOMING VIDEOS
4/2 (Yup, next week!) - Roman Reigns vs Cody Rhodes
We’ll figure it out from there. Probably something cool from WrestleMania.
Card subject to change.
HEADS UP: The prices on my prints at Schamberger Labs will be going up by $5 in the next week or two. Real-world cost-of-doing-business stuff is making that happen. I put it off probably longer than I should have but here we are. Thanks for your continued support of the arts!
Hundreds of prints and paintings at Schamberger Labs!
Rob and Jason Arnett's novella Rudow Can't Fail!
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Signed prints at WWE Auction.
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WHAT I LIKED THIS WEEK
I really knew nothing about Black Phoenix Volume One by Rich Tommaso, having ordered it solely on the strength of his prior work but I wasn’t ready for how good this would be. It’s presented as a pulp magazine crime anthology, with Tommaso writing and drawing all of the various short stories throughout. It’s absolutely brilliant, ranging from hard-boiled to light-hearted, from procedural to metaphysical. It’s quite the accomplishment and I’m looking forward to the next volume!
Katy and I finally got out to see Creed III last Sunday night and loved it. It’s a tale of how childhood trauma and the the people from that time can hold one back and keep them from enjoying all of the good that their own hard work has brought them. NO IDEA WHY I RELATED WITH SUCH A STORY.
During the previews for Creed, they showed that there was a one-night screening of Godzilla: Tokyo SOS on Wednesday night and I immediately texted my friend David to see if he wanted to go with. SPOILER: He did. Katy asked me if I’d ever seen it and I honestly didn’t know, telling her, “I’ve either seen every Godzilla movie or only about four of them. I'm honestly unsure.” About two-thirds of the way in I realized that, yes, in fact I HAVE seen it before. It was the bit where Godzilla fires through a building at Mechagodzilla and then crashes through it that I remembered. Anyway. David and I had a blast and I’m so glad we went to see it!
While working this past week I had Star Trek: The Next Generation Season One playing and you know what? A lot of people crap on this and Season Two but it was thoroughly watchable with several very good episodes. ‘Conspiracy’ especially is a favorite, pretty much answering what it would look like if John Carpenter directed a Trek episode. It’s also a fantastic series to have playing while working, as the dialogue is so strong that it almost works just as a radio show. Probably helps that I’ve been watching and rewatching TNG since it originally aired!
I’ve been down in the dumps with not being a part of ‘Mania this year and my old friends from the bridge of Enterprise-D are there for me now the same way they always have been.
WRESTLEMANIA WEEK SIGNED PRINTS!
Speaking of!
Since I’m not there in person at WrestleMania this year, that means the exclusive prints I’d normally have there are now able to be sold online instead. These are the three ‘holy grail’ items I’ve got this year on WWE Auction:
3/31 - John Cena - This is from that batch of 8.5x11 prints that were my first-ever signed prints. There’s only five of these and they’re priced at $200 each.
4/1 - Sami Zayn vs Kevin Owens: Fight Forever - 25 of these, signed by both of these incredible competitors! $150 each and there’s also a chase variant where KO added some dialogue from Sami!
4/2 - Triple H vs Roman Reigns: WrestleMania 32 - The two biggest names in all of pro wrestling today, who once squared off in the main event of WM32, both signed these 10 prints celebrating that historic bout! $400 each. FYI: WWE actually did an exclusive photo shoot with them just for me to make this painting. This is a big one, my friend.
These will all launch at 7PM CST on the dates noted above.
Korma goes nuts for packing paper. He’ll roar and dig around in it and tear at it with his teeth!
YOU GOOD?
It was a full week for me, probably keeping myself busy so that I wouldn’t get lost in my emotions around not being a part of WrestleMania this year. Lots of complex feelings there, but I’ll save those for my therapist.
Instead, here’s some good stuff from the past week:
I finished the Bret v Shawn painting on Tuesday. Have you ever noticed that ‘Bret vs Shawn’ has the same initials as ‘Batman vs Superman’? I have! Like I said above, I’m really happy with that painting and the process throughout making it.
Codename: PROJECT SABOTAGE is moving forward as its various components fall into place. Emails, inventories, Zoom training sessions, phone calls, all that stuff. Once it’s fully up and going it’ll be a whole new world for me and my art, most likely. Who knows! I’ve thought that so many other times but this one seems different.
I started on and got most of next week’s Cody Rhodes vs Roman Reigns (that’s a lot of R’s) painting done. I’ll likely finish it up tomorrow, giving me more time to fully focus on PROJECT SABOTAGE as it nears completion. It’s weird, this would normally be my piece I paint live at WrestleMania, so helloooooooo mixed emotions. But it’s coming out good, maybe tied somehow to the whole tortured artist thing. Or just decades of building my skills up. Who knows!
I’m overall going to do my best to be easy on myself this coming week and build towards the future. The sun will come out tomorrow, I’ve heard.
Love you more,
Rob
EXCLUSIVE PAID SUBSCRIBER CONTENT
Paid subscribers this week will get an exclusive 25% off discount code for prints, upcoming signed print releases at WWE Auction, and access to the exclusive chat. WE ARE GO FOR PAYWALL.
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