SHOP TALK: Rob Schamberger Newsletter 18AUG24
Be true to yourself and you will never fall.
Hi. My name's Rob Schamberger. I'm that guy who paints rasslers. And other stuff. I give thanks for inspiration, it guides my mind along the way.
WORDS
Tuesday I had a really enjoyable and productive time at a regular figure drawing session. Up top is one of the 20 minute poses, done with watercolor. Sometimes things just click, although I’ve always done well with that night’s model, Nicole.
I did my one minute gesture drawings with just watercolor, trying to capture the poses with a few strokes of the brush. I hadn’t done this in a while and it’s really liberating. Normally I use ink for these or conte crayon.
Here’s two five minute poses, also done with straight-out watercolor and no pencil guidelines. A little more definition and something approaching composition with both, but again it’s about trying to get as much information down as possible in the timeframe given.
Here’s two 15 minute poses. Going from 5 to 15 at first feels like an eternity but it’s still a tight window of time to get something done. I’m especially happy with the first one. I did light guidelines with a pencil for each of these and also used a large flat brush to wet the entire surface, which allows the watercolor to behave differently than putting it directly on dry paper.
And then this and the aforementioned one up top are both 20 minute poses. I was being intentionally ethereal with these, letting them be more about color and the suggestion of form than anything realistic. Art for art’s sake, as it were.
A lot of experimentation that actually worked out this time around. Sometimes I really crap the bed with figure drawing because I’m trying things out and they don’t work, but that’s all part of the process. For me, I’m constantly examining everything that works and doesn’t work and asking “Why?” for each so that I can continue to learn and grow. In my opinion, as artists we’re not making individual works of art but instead a body of work. So something like figure drawing, where there’s no stakes commercially and instead purely for self-enrichment is very valuable.
Here’s a preview of Thursday’s new Orange Cassidy painting. Or something. I don’t know. Whatever. Hey, denim.
UPCOMING AEW/PWT PAINTINGS
Orange Cassidy - SIGNED
Mark Briscoe
Mariah May
Dustin Rhodes
Kamille
Card subject to change.
ORIGINAL ART ANNOUNCEMENT
In lieu of a new print on August 29th at ShopAEW, we’re going to instead release some original paintings. The tentative list are Toni Storm, Mercedes Mone and Britt Baker. More details soon as everything finalizes.
Rob’s Art on ShopAEW
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Rob and Jason Arnett's novella Rudow Can't Fail!
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Rob’s prints and shirts at Pro Wrestling Tees
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Instagram
Threads
Cara
YouTube
WHAT I LIKED THIS WEEK
Katy had a thing on Saturday night so I stayed in and ended up watching The Equalizer movies for the first time. They’re kind of what I wished the John Wick movies were, honestly. Denzel Washington’s character has a mysterious secret agent past and he now uses his skills to balance the scales for individual people in need. There’s some intense and often very gory action scenes, but they’re all done in service of the story and to further the characters. Also, Washington’s ability to balance the zen of his character against his capability for violence is incredible.
Sunday afternoon we finally went to see Twisters and it’s a total blast. Like, okay, the soundtrack wasn’t for me, not my favorite brand of country music, but it was infinitely watchable with very fun characters going through harrowing situations. Maybe it’s because I’m a Midwesterner myself and have had a tornado go right over my home before. There was a lady (in a mostly sold-out theater STILL) behind us who had loud exhalations when each tornado scene ended. It’s real for us ‘round here.
But that soundtrack? Oy. There’s one song where they’re singing that “you can’t take the ‘home’ out of Oklahoma” and I turn to Katy and say, “There’s no ‘E’ in Oklahoma.” I’m a fan of classic country and western, outlaw and alt-country/Americana but good grief pop country is a no for me, dawg.
I finished up the audiobook for The Mercy of Gods by James SA Corey a few days ago, their new series since they wrapped up The Expanse books. It’s about a human-like (or actually human?) planet that is invaded and quickly conquered by an alien race that’s vastly beyond their own society. A group of researchers are taken by the aliens to a prison planet to be tested, but they’re not told what the tests are nor what happens if they pass or fail. It’s sort of a mix of Saw, The Great Escape, Prometheus and Starship Troopers. A great way to establish this setting and the characters and from how much I enjoyed The Expanse books I have high hopes for where this goes.
I finished reading the first Hitman Omnibus by Garth Ennis and John McCrea on Monday. It felt like hanging out with old friends that I hadn’t seen in 25 years. It collects the first half of the series as well as the character’s initial appearances as well as a gorgeous annual drawn by Carlos Esquerrez and Steve Pugh. There’s definitely an arc as Ennis figures out what this book will be that coalesces wonderfully with the ‘Who Dares Wins’ and ‘Tommy’s Heroes’ arcs, which also kick up a notch when Garry Leach comes on to ink McCrea’s darkly humorous artwork.
I eagerly read Friday Book Three by Ed Brubaker and Marcos Martin and loved how it concludes the ‘what happens when teen detectives grow up’ story they were telling. Time travel zaniness, evil elves and faeries, and a couple college kids trying to figure out where they fit into the world. Really beautiful stuff.
I’m mostly through reading Grendel Omnibus volume 6, which I believe is the last of these collections. The first four collected Wagner’s work with the character and the latter two were the ‘Grendel Tales’ stories by other creators. I was reading a lot of this for the first time. Maybe it’s the nihilistic nature of the characters but I gotta say, some of this was a chore to read for me personally. Like, there wasn’t a lot to identify with or hope for. That said, it’s all absolutely gorgeous throughout and from War Child on I was really digging it. The art in this final collection is especially eye-popping, notably Dave Cooper painting over Pat McKeown’s drawings.
When my copy of David Mazzuchelli’s Batman: Year One Artist Edition came in I legitimately got choked up. See, my love for art came from comic books and I started reading them around 1987-88. The four books that were constantly talked about as being the best of the best were Watchmen, Maus, Dark Knight Returns and Batman: Year One. They all became central to my artistic DNA. If you’re unfamiliar with the Artist Edition books, they’re exact reproductions of the original art used for seminal comic books, to give you as close an experience as possible to viewing those original pieces. Like, yellowing of the paper, correction marks, and the like. So, with the way my life has gone obviously my artistic roots are very important to me and to pore through a collection of all of the original art from one of the Big Four books is an experience that hit me to my core.
Top of the world!
YOU GOOD?
Yesterday was Katy’s birthday, so we made a day of it. We front-loaded with a big brunch and then headed over to the National World War I Museum and Liberty Memorial for somehow the first time. More on that in next Sunday’s newsletter because it’s going to get a few paintings out of me, but we had a wonderful time there including going up on top of the Liberty Memorial for the above epic selfie.
After that we played chess at a bar before heading over for a lovely Italian dinner at a place that may or may not have been one of the spots that Las Vegas was ran from by the mob back in the day. Regardless, my linguine was among the best I’ve ever had. We went to a neighborhood bar for a nightcap and then called it a day.
In October Katy and I will have been together for 18(!) years. Watching her grow into the woman that she is today has been a real honor and a pleasure. Anyone lucky enough to be in her orbit will tell you the same thing.
Love you more,
Rob