SHOP TALK: Rob Schamberger Newsletter 24DEC23

Let me go on.

Hi. My name's Rob Schamberger. I'm that guy who paints rasslers. And other stuff. Like I blister in the sun.

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WHAT’S NEW?

That was definitely new. Unbeknownst to me, Paul Heyman posted my new painting of he and Roman Reigns on Instagram and got WWE and Roman to collaborate. It got pretty big. Over a third of a million likes so far, but who’s counting.

I was at Raw on Monday and thanked him shortly after it went up. We had a really great sit-down talk about having a long career with WWE and he gave me some amazing advice that I’ll use going forward. No, I’m not going to tell you what it was. But I’m really appreciative of Paul and the support he’s shown to me and my work over the years.

I took a lot of figurative punches behind the scenes this year and it was…yeah, it was appreciated to have this happen. I learned a lot about myself in 2023, about how much I can do, what my limits are, and how much I can grow when needed.

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Here’s a progress shot to whet your appetite for next week’s CM Punk painting. Tikka’s been working really hard on it. He’s a good helper, yes he is.

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A QUICK MESSAGE ON BEHALF OF MY MOTHER-IN-LAW

Katy’s mom Ruth Ann has been battling cancer for several years now and it’s drained her finances. The family has set up a GoFundMe to help with the medical costs. If you have a moment to give it a read, please do. If you can pass along the link or contribute to the cause, the family would greatly thank you.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

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UPCOMING WWE PAINTINGS  

• CM Punk

• Kairi Sane

• Randy Orton

• Iyo Sky

Card subject to change.

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Hundreds of prints and paintings at Schamberger Labs!
Rob and Jason Arnett's novella Rudow Can't Fail!
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Rob’s prints on WWE Shop!
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Instagram
YouTube

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WHAT I LIKED THIS YEAR (PART 1: BOOKS)

Here’s a few Top 5(ish) lists of what I really enjoyed this year in graphic novels and prose. These aren’t in any order beyond how they showed up in the ‘Read’ category in my Goodreads app.

NEW GRAPHIC NOVELS

Les Miserables adapted by Takahiro Arai - I’d never read the original book nor saw the stage production, so I came into this fresh and yeah, I see why it’s considered such an important story. This is a lovely manga adaptation, and a true adaptation at that, telling the story in a way that makes sense in sequential art.

Star Trek and Star Trek: Defiant by Jackson Lanzing, Collin Kelly, Christopher Cantwell and friends - All of the Star Trek books overall from IDW this year have been very enjoyable, but this new ‘Avengers’ type approach with these ongoing series has been a lot of fun. They’re taking characters from all of the shows and mixing and matching them up, seeing how their different personalities play off of each other.

Monica by Daniel Clowes - A masterpiece from a master of the craft. A sci-fi indie horror film about generational trauma, cults and people who turn into trees. It’s weird and uncomfortable and wonderful.

Night Fever by Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips - My personal favorite creative team in all of comics, telling a violent erotic noir tale about a man thrust into a world he should definitely not be in.

Gender Queer by Maia Kobabe - The most-banned book in America, making headlines again this past week when police raided a classroom trying to find copies of it to confiscate. I’m not making this up. I wish the people stoking the flames of hysteria around it would instead put their efforts into actually reading it, because it’s a beautiful autobiography about finding one’s identity and trying to fit into the world in a way that’s unique to them. You know, like we all try to do.

The only sinister thing about this book are the people trying to censor it and their bigoted reasons for doing so.

GRAPHIC NOVEL OMNIBUSES

Seven Soldiers by Grant Morrison and friends - I couldn’t put this down as soon as I started reading it, even though I’ve read this a couple times before over the years. It’s one of those things that I glean something new from with every reading, loving how Morrison weaves all of these tales together but not having the characters really meet at all.

Sandman Mystery Theatre Compendium by Matt Wagner, Steven T Seagle, Guy Davis and friends - I’d read some of this before but this collection had far more and it’s a delight. I love the ‘Nick and Nora’ of it all, with Dian Belmont being such a rich and three-dimensional character against the backdrop of Wesley Dodds’ mysterious life as the Sandman.

Tom Strong and Top 10 Compendiums by Alan Moore, Chris Sprouse, Gene Ha and friends - I truly loved Alan Moore’s America’s Best Comics line back when they were originally coming out so it was a delight to revisit it all with these two collections. I’ll say it now: I wish the American comics industry had shaped itself around the ABC books instead of Watchmen. The joy, the wonder, and the optimism of them all are a lot more engaging for me to read than the grim and gritty stuff that’s all too common.

Daredevil by Frank Miller and Klaus Janson - When I was around 13 I was at a local comic convention talking to a dealer about how I’d love to read the Miller Daredevil stuff some day but could never afford them. He pulled out all of the copies he had and asked me how much money I had on me. I had maybe 40 bucks and he sold them to me for 11. “You’re at the right age to read these and I’d rather you had them than someone who’s just going to have them sitting in a box somewhere.”

I’ve never forgotten that.

Flash forward to earlier this year and I’m at a hotel in Indiana reading this collection, finally getting the whole story in one sitting. I had to put it down to go work backstage at a WWE house show and that night was the last time I saw my friend Windham before he passed away.

As GREAT as these comics are, it’s the memories around them that make them all the more special for me.

Avengers by Kurt Busiek and George Perez - I’d read the first few issues of this when it originally came out but likely due to finances I’d not kept on with it. Gosh, this is some of, if not THE best Avengers comics ever made. Busiek and Perez hit the road at full speed and kept it going.

PROSE NOVELS

QUICK NOTE: I listened to the audiobooks for each of these while working. If that matters. It doesn’t matter. Nothing matters beyond what we individually give meaning to.

The Reformatory by Tananarive Due - Probably the best book of the year. It perfectly uses the genre of horror to tell the story of true human horrors from the past in a palatable way. It’s harrowing but also full of optimism.

Small Mercies by Dennis Lehane - Lehane is my overall favorite author, so it’s exciting any time he puts something new out. This one is a crime caper story around the setting of the race riots that erupted over Boston’s school desegregation. It’s a thriller with just the crime aspect, but against that backdrop it becomes truly epic. Get ready to be challenged if you read it. It doesn’t shy away from some very difficult topics.

The Night Always Comes by Willy Vlautin - Speaking of difficult, this book hit a little too close to home for me. A young woman has two days to try to secure a future for her and her family, constantly running up against the reality that no one cares about her beyond how they can use her. This one stuck to my bones.

Everybody Knows by Jordan Harper - A fascinating twist on the neo-noir novel, this follows a black bag publicist, someone that the movie studios uses to cover up when their stars break bad, who finds herself in over her head on a case with far too many angles, many of which are sharp and pointed back at her.

Garth Marenghi’s TerrorTome - I’m so glad I listened to this audiobook. A farce of 80’s and 90’s horror writers who took themselves too seriously, this takes that joke to levels I couldn’t have imagined and is twisted even further with the author’s commitment to it. It’s a thing to behold, in all of its terrible majesty.

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Bright and cheery!

YOU GOOD?  

Probably the one thing that affected my art the most this year has been integrating the use of acrylic glazing to my process. If you’re unfamiliar, glazing medium is something you can mix into acrylic paint to thin it out but unlike using just water, the pigment stays more consistent. There’s A LOT of uses for this and I’ve creatively been reenergized playing around with all of them.

An example from earlier this week is my above work-in-progress for my next Emotions Series painting. I made a monochromatic underpainting with black, white and shades of grey, getting the various tones where I wanted them for the composition. Sometimes I’ll do a more finished approach with the underpainting and other times it’s more basic, it all depends on the type of painting I’m making. This time around I wanted it a bit more finished-looking because my plan is to not do a whole lot more painting over this beyond highlights.

So then I mixed some satin glazing liquid in with a first layer of napthol red light followed by another coat mixed with quinacridone red and, well, you can see what it did. All of those tones stayed, but with that red mixed over them affecting its saturation. It’s really dramatic, isn’t it?

A friend brought up to me that it’s similar to what the ‘multiply’ layer setting in Photoshop does, if you’re familiar with that.

Anyway, this is just one of the many ways to integrate this into my work and it’s completely changed the ways I think about working with acrylics. That’s, to me, the biggest joy of being an artist: Everything I make informs what I’ll make next. Everything that went right, everything that went wrong, every mistake that can be replicated on purpose, all of that helps me to keep growing as an artist.

I ran into another friend the other night and she asked me about why I go to figure drawing sessions since I’m already painting all day anyway. Why? Because I just love making art and I go for any excuse to make more, especially in a setting like figure drawing where it’s just about making the art and challenging myself. It’s a space where I can be lousy and not worry about how it’s affecting my income, allowing me to grow even more.

And you, the person reading this, thank YOU for your support of my work and allowing me to evolve and grow.

Love you more,
Rob

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EXCLUSIVE PAID SUBSCRIBER CONTENT

Paid subscribers this week will get an exclusive 25% off discount code to Schamberger Labs. Also lots of information about upcoming signed prints on WWE Shop. WE ARE GO FOR PAYWALL.