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Hi. My name's Rob Schamberger. I'm that guy who paints rasslers. And other stuff. Won’t you give me all the speed I lack?
WORDS
For my first painting of 2023 I decided to make a watercolor of Dakota Kai, Iyo Sky and Bayley, together known as Damage Ctrl! I pushed myself technically and stylistically on this, having them sort of flow from one to another yet still being distinct as well.
It’s largely made in watercolor with a tad bit of colored pencil used to make a few borders more distinct yet only subtly so. Otherwise it was all about creating depth through layers of watercolor with some of it flowing in and out of their own individual borders, creating unity between them.
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
Mr Perfect! Acrylic!
Cody Rhodes
Veer Mahaan
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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Signed prints at WWE Auction.
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SCHAMBERGER LABS: THE SERIES!
The next Wrestling Landscape Painting will be Shawn Michaels vs Bret Hart from WrestleMania XII! It’s penciled out and I should begin painting on it this week. It’s going to be an acrylic painting like the Charlotte Flair one. But different.
WHAT I LIKED THIS WEEK
Wednesday night I watched the Dio: Dreamers Never Die documentary and was NOT prepared for how much it’d land with me. I’ll be honest, I’ve never been that into Dio’s music. No particular reason, just not my flavor of ice cream. Maybe it’s because I got REALLY into music with the grunge/alternative scene which was somehow against Dio’s era of metal, I don’t know. I do consider Holy Diver to be one of the very best music videos ever made, of course. But this was an absolutely beautiful documentary that looked through Ronnie’s life, his passion for music, and all told through those close to him and those impacted by his work.
I finished up reading the Sleeper omnibus by Ed Brubaker, Sean Phillips, Colin Wilson and Jim Lee a few days ago and it’s better than I remembered it. I remembered it very fondly. This was Brubaker and Phillips’ first major collaboration (I believe they had done a Batman Elseworlds special together before this, and Sean inked Scene of the Crime) and it’s wild how great a pairing they were right out of the gate. Even wilder how much better they are now! If you’re unfamiliar, Sleeper follows an undercover agent who’s infiltrated a supervillain organization but finds himself out on his own when his handler is shot and left comatose. Sort of a Donnie Brasco meets Batman but wildly better.
Captain America: The Ghost Army by Alan Gratz and Brent Schoonover is a perfect young reader graphic novel for the kid in your life who loves superheroes. 8 or 9 year-old me would’ve read this over and over until the cover fell off, for sure. I’m biased because Brent’s a buddy of mine, but he drew the bejeezus out of this and it’ll stand as a high water mark for an already-high quality body of work from him. He and Alan are out touring with the book and I just couldn’t be happier for such a great dude.
Katy and I finished up watching I Love That For You Friday night and we both really enjoyed the show. It’s heavy but very much offset by outrageous comedy. Starring SNL alums Vanessa Bayer and Molly Shannon, it tells the story of Bayer’s character who survived childhood leukemia (the heavy part) and fell in love with home shopping TV while in the hospital (the hilarious part). Now as an adult, she finds herself as a host on the channel but soon develops an intricate web of lies to keep this dream job going.
Yesterday morning I read Now Let Me Fly: A Portrait of Eugene Bullard by Ronald Wimberly and Brahm Revel and it’s wild that here in the first week of 2023 we already have a contender for the best graphic novel of the year! It tells the story of Eugene Ballard, the world’s first black fighter pilot but that’s amazingly the smallest part of the tale. From escaping the horrors of segregation by stowing away on a transatlantic ship, to becoming a boxer in Europe, from joining the French Foreign Legion at the onset of World War I to flying solo thousands of feet in the air, it’s one of the most amazing true stories I’ve ever read.
I love a good foggy morning. This was the view from my front yard on Monday.
YOU GOOD?
Just to say it: No, I don’t know what’s going on at WWE at the moment. Right now it’s none of my business and I’ll only learn things when and if it affects how I operate my business. All told.
In the meantime I’m focusing on making art because I have the luxury of doing so for a living! Earlier this week I finished up the above Damage Ctrl painting and am now about halfway through next week’s Mr Perfect acrylic. I’ll hopefully be able to get some work in this coming week on my new Cody Rhodes piece before we leave for Hawaii.
Let’s see, what else is going on?
As revealed in the chat a few days ago, pretty soon I’ll have custom branded print books available for you to keep your non-framed collection in. I’m super excited about this. For months now I’ve been trying to source these and I finally found a great distributor to get them from.
My best-selling item at Schamberger Labs are 11x14 plastic top-loaders, which tells me y’all want ways to store your collection and these books are my personal favorite way to do this. Other than framing and hanging them on your walls, of course! More details once they become available, naturally.
Last Thursday saw the debut of the Time Travel Art Machine newsletter. For the next couple weeks these will go out on Thursdays and then switch to both Tuesdays and Thursdays. They’re fun and sometimes poignant looks back at the paintings from my career that have meant a lot to me or that I may have a story surrounding. The next one looks at a great example of why I do what I do for a living. Others I have planned include the time I painted on ring canvas and my first wrestling painting. That’s part of this newsletter so you’re already subscribed!
The future, as always, is uncertain and out of my control. But there’s some things I do have control over and I’m going to keep doing my absolute best to make them really special for us.
Love you more,
Rob
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