SHOP TALK: Rob Schamberger Newsletter 06APR25

Hey babe, your hair's alright.

Apr 06, 2025

Hi. My name's Rob Schamberger. I'm that guy who paints rasslers. And other stuff. Hot tramp, I love you so.

WORDS

NEEDS: STABILITY

Watercolor on 12” x 16” watercolor paper

The quality, state, or degree of being firmly established, not changing or fluctuating.

Here’s my original sketch for this painting. Because I’m working with a model like Doug who has such Classical features, I can’t help but go with a strong chiaroscuro approach with heavy shadows and soft natural lighting. I had a few other colors I was playing around with in my primer coats but I still moved towards what I’d initially planned in this sketch. Don’t fix what’s not broken, dig?

Here’s Kima with a preview of Thursday’s new Harley Cameron painting.

Everybody counts or nobody counts.

MYSTERY MAN

In case you didn’t read it on Friday, I finished up drawing Mystery Man and found a way to tie it into the original version I drew when I was 13 that ended up making me cry as I was writing it. I started this as just a fun thing to do but quickly found I was doing some profound inner child work, getting into dialogue with my younger self in a way that only works as a comic.

I’m proud of it and if you could take a few minutes to read it, that’d mean a lot to me. (The above image and bold text are links to the full comic.)

Here’s the original inks for the final page:

13 year old me thinks this is pretty rad.

UPCOMING AEW/PWT PAINTINGS

Harley Cameron - SIGNED!
Julia Hart
Megan Bayne
Timeless Toni Storm
Swerve Strickland

Card subject to change.

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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Bluesky
Cara
YouTube

EXCLUSIVE PWT C2E2 PRINTS!

I won’t be there, but my pals at Pro Wrestling Tee’s asked me to make a couple exclusive prints featuring The Outrunners and Danhausen for their signings there next weekend.

As you can see, I’m entering my turquoise period. If you’re going to the show be sure to tell the crew you like the art and that I say hi!

There MAY be a few of these going online after. I don’t know, but if so I’ll be sure to pass along the details once I have them.

WHAT I LIKED THIS WEEK

I finished reading Batman: The Dark Age by Mark Russell and Mike Allred yesterday morning and found it to be a remarkably fresh take on the character. It’s a reimagining of a Batman who ages in real time, coming of age at the height of the Vietnam War and staying active through the mid-80’s. But it gets into a lot of the things they normally shy away from with him, like seeking therapy or utilizing his riches to help those less fortunate. And just the freshest take on The Joker in decades. Allred is the perfect artist for this, balancing the gritty real world of it against his retro cartoony superhero style. Good stuff.

I finished up the first Jon Sable: Freelance omnibus by Mike Grell a couple days ago and was pleased to discover that this highly-regarded and beloved series by a top-tier creator is, in fact, very good. I’ve really only read Grell’s Green Arrow run so this was a magnificent surprise for me on not just how good this is but how wonderfully it holds up. It’s in the ‘Vietnam Vet loner trying to understand a world that doesn’t make sense’ action genre that was prevalent in the 70’s and 80’s, like Magnum PI or Spenser for Hire. And lordamighty did Grell draw the hell out of this book. I’ll definitely be hunting down the rest of this sooner than later.

And real quick I want to show some love to Common Side Effects season one. A truly lovely, very human and lovingly gorgeous show. Couldn’t be happier it’s been picked up for a second season. Things this good normally don’t get to continue.

I’ve never been more excited about a colony of bacteria to develop.

YOU GOOD?

You’ve probably noticed that like most everyone else I’m struggling with the state of the world. My PTSD flares on a near-daily basis and I’m using all of my therapy tools regularly. A big one is allowing what I call the ‘no-asterisk good things’ to coexist with the more challenging things. As powerful as art is in my life, it’s also how I make a living so, you know, asterisks. This time last year I was getting NO love from making art, for instance.

But things like gardening, or my cats or cooking I thoroughly enjoy. A few months back I started making my own vinegars and there’s a whole corner of our kitchen now full of different mason jars with different vinegars in various stages of their processes. Thursday morning I discovered that my natural red wine vinegar batch is developing what’s called a ‘Mother of Vinegars’ which is really exciting.

See, what’s happening is that bacteria are converting the alcohol of the wine into acid and those bacteria form up into a colony. Once the vinegar is ready, you can remove the Mother and use it to kickstart a new batch because these are the exact bacteria you want. You can also put them in a jar of vinegar to store for later use.

I have no control over the outside world and right now it scares the shit out of me, and that’s a real and valid feeling to have. But I’ve also developed my first Mother of Vinegars that I can use to make some really good stuff soon, and it’s perfectly valid to be excited about that too.

I hope you’ve got your equivalent of a bacterial colony giving you some no-asterisks joy, too.

Love you more,
Rob