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.
Hi. My name's Rob Schamberger. I'm that guy who paints rasslers. And other stuff. Your life burns faster.
WORDS
New hair, new Rhea Ripley painting! This is another one where I experimented with a glazing medium and I’m dang happy with the results. I did a full-on monochromatic greyscale painting underneath and got expressive with my mark-making, using a big flat brush for some areas and a palette knife for others. I then applied a couple shades of violet glaze over the top, but not over all of it, before tightening up with black and white paint.
It’s deep, rich and expressive but still controlled where it needs to be. I think it gives a vibrancy and energy that matches Rhea’s persona really well. And to answer your question, yes, those spikes were tough to paint.
ICYMI, here's the latest Canvas 2 Canvas episode. Tomorrow’s episode will go up on WWE's YouTube channel at 12PM CST!
UPCOMING PAINTINGS
Asuka
Tiffany Stratton
Card subject to change.
Hundreds of prints and paintings at Schamberger Labs!
Rob and Jason Arnett's novella Rudow Can't Fail!
###
Prints and Signed Prints at WWE Shop
###
Instagram
Threads
YouTube
WHAT I LIKED THIS WEEK
Star Trek: Lower Decks season four was hella fun. It and Strange New Worlds are tied for my favorite of the new Trek stuff. It’s an obvious love letter to Boldly Going Where No One Has Gone Before, less making fun of the goofier side of things and more laughing WITH them. I’d heard showrunner Mike McMahon describe it as all of the B-plots from Next Generation and its odder episodes, like Data learning how to paint or Beverly doinking a ghost. But for these characters, these are the A-plots and often life-threateningly so.
Batman: The Audio Adventures on Max is an absolute hidden gem. I describe it as a sort of found footage approach to Batman: The Animated Series meets the 60’s Batman show. It’s serious but not afraid to have fun or to point out how ludicrous the whole Batman concept is. It’s written by a former SNL head writer with a ton of SNL alum like Fred Armisen, Seth Meyers, Jason Sudeikis as a drunk Mayor Hamilton Hill, Kenan Thompson as Gordon, and Bobby Moynihan absolutely killing as The Penguin. Plus you just HAVE to hear Brent Spiner’s absolutely terrifying approach as The Joker. Best since Mark Hamill, in my opinion. I also read the comic tie-in which is super fun.
Speaking of Max, Scavengers Reign is maybe my new favorite thing. It’s like Hayao Miyazaki adapting 80’s Heavy Metal comics. A spaceship is damaged and its crew is stranded on a very alien planet, trying to learn its ways and survive its dangers. The alien nature of the planet is the most fascinating thing to me personally and what they seem to really lean into. Gorgeous, gorgeous stuff.
Monica by Daniel Clowes is possibly the richest work yet from one of our best living cartoonists. A series of interconnected stories telling of generational trauma, cults, hippies, and a woman’s search to find out why she wasn’t capable of being loved by her parents. Oh, and a guy gets turned into a tree. Maybe.
The Super Hero’s Journey by Patrick McDonnell was a pleasant surprise. McDonnell, best known for his Mutts comic strip, created this graphic novel celebrating Marvel comics of the 60’s and what they meant to him as a kid reading them back then. It’s like a comic book remix, using original art by the likes of Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko and Don Heck with his own to try to find the ultimate goal of all acts of heroism. It’s a cool thing.
DJ Shadow’s new album Action Adventure is a stripped-down back-to-form for one of my favorites. It’s got a lot of 80’s synth vibe to it, but also very now while also very much DJ Shadow. GREAT to read and/or write to. And fellow comic book heads will pop for the title of the fourth track, “Craig, Ingels and Wrightson”.
The ennui of being a cat on Halloween.
YOU GOOD?
Every October Katy and I like to watch ‘scary’ movies to lead up to Halloween. Our picks this year were Wes Craven’s New Nightmare, Hellraiser, The Lost Boys, and Candyman. Here’s my capsule reviews of each, because I know you’re just DYING to find out:
New Nightmare was overall the best all-around of them. I’d seen it a couple times before but not in a decade or two so a lot of it was fresh for this viewing. I love the concept of being haunted by your past works.
I’d somehow never seen Hellraiser before and I feel like someone would be valid to say it’s either a piece of hot garbage or that it’s deeply profound. I really enjoyed it overall, especially the looks of the Cenobites. A lot of it doesn’t age well visually, but I read that Clive Barker was in an impossible spot with the budgetary restraints.
BONUS: Here’s the home shopping commercial that ran at the end of the original Hellraiser VHS release. It’s outstanding.
It’d been a couple decades since I’d seen Lost Boys so a lot of it was also fresh for me. It’s a wonderfully, delightfully gay movie, not even pretending to be anything other than that. Alex Winter’s outrageous mullet is also worth the price of admission alone.
Candyman was my personal favorite of this year’s viewing. It holds up REALLY WELL, is still scary and still reads as modern. Because so much of the set and the effects are shrouded by shadows, they look outstanding and a lot of the horror is done in a Hitchcock-ian fashion where it happens off-screen and in the viewer’s mind. I also like that JUST ENOUGH is explained to allow us to create our own mythology to fill in the blanks but not enough to be a series of exposition-dumps.
This was also our first year being home on Halloween (other than lockdown, which was just a bye-year) so it was our first time handing out candy. Lots of cute kids, including an adorable girl who let us know that her costume’s tail had torn off but wanted to make sure we knew it would be fixed soon.
Love you more,
Rob
EXCLUSIVE PAID SUBSCRIBER CONTENT
Paid subscribers this week will get an exclusive 25% off discount code for prints! Plus, 24 hour early access to the original RHEA RIPLEY painting!
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Rob Schamberger Newsletter to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.