RUTHLESS AGGRESSION! Rob Schamberger Newsletter 17APR22
I search for the beat in this dirty town.
Only 25 total of each will be made and when they're gone, they're gone. I'll be really vigilant about protecting these print runs, rewarding early adopters. Use promo code RUTHLESS for 20% off through 9AM CST tomorrow April 18, 2022. Click here to get yours.
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Hi. My name's Rob Schamberger. I'm that guy who paints rasslers. And other stuff. Downtown the young ones are going. Downtown the young ones are growing.
WORDS
Twenty years ago in 2002 we saw the debuts of Batista, John Cena, Randy Orton and Brock Lesnar to herald the Ruthless Aggression era of WWE. I’m celebrating their debuts with this Select Series wave, each with their early looks to show just how far they’ve all come. Twenty years! It’s wild that at one point each of these men, who have gone on to dominate not just WWE but Hollywood, mixed martial arts and more, were new faces on the scene with so many at the time saying there was no way they could carry on from the Attitude Era.
Wild, right? We rarely recognize what we have at the time and no one has any idea just how successful someone can go on to be. That we had these guys and so many others debut within a year of each other and then go on to be the megastars they now are is a testament to each of them.
Here's all of the Select Series paintings so far! This collection was inspired by and even takes its name from video game character select screens. The ultimate goal is to do paintings of everyone(!) under the WWE umbrella AND all of their looks. It's super ambitious but also a ton of fun to make.
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
Cody Rhodes
Rhea Ripley
Edge
Select Series Lady Legends Wave 2022
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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Shirts and prints at WWE Shop.
Signed prints at WWE Auction.
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Twitter
Instagram
YouTube
UPCOMING SIGNED PRINTS
4/18: The Undertaker
4/19: Santos Escobar
4/22: Stone Cold Steve Austin
As you might suspect, Undertaker and Austin will go for a higher premium price than normal. These are both first-time signings and for all I know the last time they’ll sign for me. There are 14 of the Taker and 2 of Stone Cold. You’re goddamn right I kept an Undertaker for myself and the Stone Cold are what we have left from Axxess. I imagine both will sell out very quickly.
Card subject to change.
WHAT I LIKED LAST WEEK
Gosh I’m loving Star Trek: Picard Season Two so far. Listen, I’m going to go full Trekkie here for a moment. Either embrace it or move on down to the next item. Not only is this season so far a perfect mixture of the Q Continuum, the Borg, the City on the Edge of Forever, Gary Seven, Deep Space Nine’s Past Tense, and the Eugenics War, but it’s also a wonderful deep dive into the unexplored early life of the titular Jean-Luc Picard. This past week’s episode for instance does some heavy yet deft inner child work that is so spot on to how that happens in therapy, yet done with a sci-fi/ fantasy mirror that actually allows them to get even more real. Powerful stuff.
Tokyo Vice is off to a great start so far. I’m a 42 year-old dude so I’m predisposed to enjoy Michael Mann’s work, but I’m also a nerd for gaijin getting mixed up in yakuza operations so this pulled me right on in. It’s based on a true story from a book of the same name that I haven’t read yet but is on my list to get to. If you’re a fellow fan of Mann’s, Ridley Scott’s Black Rain or Sydney Pollack’s Yakuza I think you’ll dig this show on HBO Max quite a bit, too.
YOU GOOD?
So, this newsletter looks a little different. What’s up with that?
I’ve moved from MailChimp to Substack due to the options the latter gives me to offer more to you, my favorite reader. Options like what? I’m glad you asked!
There’s now three tiers to the newsletter:
You can continue as-is with the free tier and get the same quality content you’ve always gotten from me. HOWEVER, you’ll no longer get the discount codes nor the list of upcoming signed prints. If that’s cool for you, there’s nothing for you to do. Just keep on a’reading each Sunday morning.
Fear not! There’s also now the paid tier at $10 a month or $100 a year which will get you an exclusive monthly discount code for 25% off prints (do the math, it pays for itself if you buy at least 2 prints a month), the list of upcoming signed prints, first access at original paintings (a day before everyone else!) and access to quarterly exclusive numbered prints.
And it gets better! For the real ones, there’s the founding member tier at $200 a year that gets you all of that PLUS not only are the quarterly exclusive numbered prints on the house but they’ll be hand re-marked by me, meaning I’ll be painting directly on the print making each one an original piece of art!
Over time I imagine I’ll add more benefits to the paid tiers like a message board and an exclusive video series, but I like to build things from a solid foundation rather than overcommitting at the beginning and then not keeping my word to you.
Maybe this is wishful thinking, maybe it’s my over-active ego, but I also like to think there are people out there who simply want to support the art and will plunk down around two McDonald’s breakfasts’ worth of money a month to directly keep everything going on my end. I don’t know. We’ll see. We’re all trying our best.
An Egg McMuffin with no Canadian bacon sounds so good right now…
Love you more,
Rob