SHOP TALK: Rob Schamberger Newsletter 09JUN24

I've just seen a face.

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Hi. My name's Rob Schamberger. I'm that guy who paints rasslers. And other stuff. Had it been another day I might have looked the other way.

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A QUICK HOUSEKEEPING NOTE

Now that things seem to be settled in with AEW and Pro Wrestling Tees, I’m going to start sending two emails a week again. One on Thursdays at 11:30AM CST as a reminder for new print releases and then these on Sundays with things like my other art, what I liked over the past week, maybe a preview of what’s coming up for new prints, and my normal ‘letter home’ to you in the You Good? section.

Thanks for your patience with this transition. You’re the actual best.

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WORDS  

Up top is the first coat on the next Emotion Series painting. I’ve been chipping away at it between other projects, taking my time because it’s significantly more complex than my normal work. This first coat was about mapping in the different planes of color that I can use as guides for what comes next.

Here’s most of the second coat. I used a flat brush to make some expressive brushstrokes to create the illusion of movement through the piece, moving the viewer’s eye down to the hand holding the paintbrush. I’ll do something a little more geometric around the central eyes, as well as a smoother blend for the hands.

That’ll pretty much finish up the second coat and then I’ll start fine-tuning things with the third coat. I like the idea of mixing expressionism with cubism for this, as well as a touch of realism. Once it’s done it’ll make sense why I’m making these decisions. As with all of the Emotion Series pieces, there’s a story being told within the composition. The comic book-y sequential art inspiration for this painting makes that a little more on the nose.

And this piece is a revisiting of one of the paintings I did during my time in Italy. I limited the color palette a bit and leaned more into the negative space aspect of the composition. Here’s the original sketch and the first go at the same painting for comparison’s sake:

I like the color choices from that first pass, but I don’t think I used them to the best effect to both accentuate the figure and for the overall composition. I opted to drop out the green and the Payne’s Gray and I really like the results I got this time around.

It’s all about learning, my friend. It’s all about learning.

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A little snapshot of what to expect with the upcoming Julia Hart piece. I’m particularly proud of this one.

UPCOMING AEW/PWT PAINTINGS  

• Julia Hart

• Thunder Rosa - SIGNED

• Adam Copeland

• Danhausen - SIGNED

Card subject to change.

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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

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WHAT I LIKED RECENTLY

We’ve got some catching up to do!

Last Sunday Katy and I went to see The Fall Guy and had a blast. She said it was the most fun she’s had at a movie since we went to see Scott Pilgrim. It’s action-packed, charming and hilarious throughout. Along with the rest of the audience we were laughing throughout and marveling at all of the practical stunts. There was a couple down our row who kept pointing at the screen, amazed at what they were seeing. It was like being at a pro wrestling show with how engaged the audience was. DEFINITELY worth seeing in the theater.

Tuesday night I went to see Furiosa and golly, what a ride this was. Pun intended. Yeah, it’s an origin story for Fury Road but it definitely stands on its own as a movie unto itself. Lots of intense visual action that carries the story surrounding the tale of a deeply traumatized person taking their power back. I’ve recently heard about how director George Miller grew up near a drive-in theater and he would watch the movies without being able to hear them, leaving him to make up the dialogue on his own. That’s led to a lot of his movies, this one and Fury Road noticeably, to be mostly without talking and instead letting both the action and the actor’s reactions tell a lot of the story. It’s fascinating.

It seems like the discourse for both of these films has been about their box office performance and that just couldn’t be more off the mark or more boring. These are awesome movies that I had a ton of fun watching. I hope you have the same experience should you choose to see them. Talking about box office or TV ratings is the least interesting way to discuss entertainment, in my opinion.

Hacks Season Three was outstanding and the way it all led to that season finale was expertly done. Jean Smart and Hannah Einbinder are outstanding here and how their characters learn from one another is a rollercoaster journey.

I finished the audiobook for Woke Up This Morning: The Definitive Oral History of The Sopranos by Michael Imperioli and Steve Schirripa while working this week. It’s a fascinating look behind the scenes at the show with stories from both cast and crew. There’s a funny ongoing bit throughout of various actors telling the stories of how they found out their characters were getting killed that’s almost as dramatic as what we saw on the screen. And yeah, they get into the ending.

MY TAKE ON THE SOPRANOS FINALE: It’s a Schrodinger’s Box scenario, right? If you’re unfamiliar, physicist Erwin Schrodinger in discussion with Albert Einstein devised a scenario that a cat is placed in a closed box with poison. Morbid. So, until you open the box the cat exists in a state of being both alive and dead and it doesn’t snap into either state until you open the box to observe which it is. That diner scene at the end of the series is a Schrodinger’s Box with Tony as the cat. This all would have worked for the viewer if a couple episodes earlier when AJ was in his philosophy class this theory had been put forth. Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.

While on my Italy trip my travel reading was the Planet of the Apes Omnibus by Daryl Gregory, Carlos Magno and Diego Barreto. It’s a fun tale from the original movie timeline set in Paris, where apes and humans attempt to coexist peacefully and it all goes horribly wrong. It’s epic in scope, comparable to Game of Thrones in how all of these warring factions play off one another. It’s out of print but worth tracking down if you’re an Apes fan.

World’s Finest: Teen Titans by Mark Waid and Emanuela Lupacchino was a delight to read. I’ve really enjoyed Waid’s World’s Finest run at DC, focusing on fun and wonder. It’s closest in comparison to his original Flash run and his Daredevil run in tone. Lupacchino’s art is gorgeous throughout, too.

I didn’t know what to expect from Mark Twain’s The War Prayer, adapted by Seymour Chwast and was truly moved by it. If like me you’re unfamiliar with this short bit of satire by Twain, it’s a biting look at how civilians view war and religion and the audacity of it all.

Dracula by James Tynion IV and Martin Simmonds was exactly as beautiful as I’d hoped it would be. A retelling of the classic Universal movie, this time largely from the perspective of Renfield. It’s up there as one of the most gorgeous graphic novel adaptations of Dracula with Jon J Muth’s, Mike Mignola’s and Georges Bess’. Definitely worth biting into. Puns! I got puns!

Rumpus Room by Mark Russell and Ramon Rasanas is, like The War Prayer, some intense societal satire. A sociopathic social media billionaire keeps people in his basement to make moisturizer out of of their blood, and they all have to vote on who the next victim will be. No, this isn’t another Q-Anon whackadoodle theory, it’s an examination of how societies will quickly adjust to terrible situations and turn on each other rather than face the ones actually responsible. And it’s all done hilariously.

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds - The Scorpius Run by Ryan Parrott, Mike Johnson and Angel Hernandez is one of the prettiest Trek books yet. The Enterprise is boldly going through a new region of space and are forced into a race against other ships, where only the winning ship gets to survive. It’s a pretty classic setup for a Trek story, but man I was constantly amazed by Hernandez’ art throughout this book. Truly rose to every occasion to make things visually enticing but also serving the reading experience.

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I loves me some gardening.

YOU GOOD?  

It’s late in the season due to our trip but this week I finally planted some pepper plants. The daily ritual of watering, weeding and generally tending the garden is one of my favorite things in life. I didn’t do any tomatoes this year, as I’ve come to the realization that our yard doesn’t get the right amount of light to properly grow them. Plus it’s a lot more dry in our region now than it used to be, so it became a lot of effort for minimal returns. But that’s okay.

On Monday, thanks to some legal help from my best friend Andy, I was able to finally terminate the commercial lease for my old office space. Thus officially ending the prior chapter of my personal and professional life. Terminating a commercial lease is a whole different thing from a residential one, by the way. But it’s done and I’m now fully existing in this new chapter and all that it will bring.

I guess it’s kind of like gardening. With the garden, I cleared out the beds from the prior year and mixed in the compost I’d been adding over the winter, some of it from what had grown there the prior season. With my professional career, I’ve cleared out what I needed for my prior client and am now taking what I learned from that time to grow something new.

As a metaphor it’s a hard hit over the head, but it’ll get me some bell peppers and paintings so that’s cool.

Love you more,
Rob

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