SHOP TALK: Rob Schamberger Newsletter 07JUL24
You're a folktale, the unexplainable.
Hi. My name's Rob Schamberger. I'm that guy who paints rasslers. And other stuff. Driving down the pitch black road.
WORDS
Above is another study of a Florency, Italy street, getting a lot closer to how I want these eventual finished paintings to look and feel. It’s the ‘feeling’ part that I’m always chasing with my work, that intangible that words can’t get across but an image can. I’ve rarely, for me, actually attained that. Like, my first time I ever actually felt it from my own work was probably in 2019 (a few months after starting therapy, funnily enough) and it’s been a handful of times since.
And it’s different feelings, of course, big and small.
Sometimes with a Wrestling Landscape I just want to get a sense of scale across. My wrestling work overall is about giving the viewer the same feeling as watching wrestling on TV or in person. The Emotion Series paintings have been all about individual feelings, naturally. My Hawaii paintings were about my awe at that tropical beauty. These Florence paintings will be about how I felt walking those streets while going through a major quake in my personal, professional and creative lives all at once.
Some of this may come through to others looking at the paintings, some may not, but I know if I’m being authentic about it to myself, at least that part is real and valid.
Here’s a preview of Thursday’s new Vader painting. Obviously I had a LOT of fun making this one! The finished painting definitely has the feeling of getting hit in the face so hard that one of your eyes pops out.
UPCOMING AEW/PWT PAINTINGS
Vader - IT’S TIME!
Adam Copeland
Malakai Black
MJF
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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Instagram
Threads
Cara
YouTube
WHAT I LIKED THIS WEEK
Star Trek: Prodigy season two debuted on Netflix. Finished it this morning! Seems like it’s leaning more into its characters and their adventures instead of trying to tie into past Trek lore, and I like that a lot. Especially with the potential reach of the Netflix audience combined with the intended young audience it’s important to let it be its own thing. I talked with one of the writers last year at the Picard premier and he was gushing about how excited the team was about this second season, and I’d say he was right.
That said, there’s a really fun Next Generation character cameo in the second half of the season, and there’s an Attack of the Killer Tribbles episode that’s a hoot. A solid entry point to Trek for any kids in your life, I think.
I finished reading the Legends of the Monsterverse omnibus earlier in the week and it was a lot of big dumb fun. It’s a collection of stories set around King Kong and Godzilla from the Legendary Studios movies, so it’s a lot of Monarch stuff to add human insight into what these giant monsters are doing. Worth it for my fellow kaiju fans.
I also read Grendel Omnibus volume 5, starting to collect the Grendel Tales non-Matt Wagner stuff. There’s some killer (haha) stories by the likes of Steve Seagle, James Robinson, Teddy Kristiansen, Paul Grist and the late Edvin Biukovic I enjoyed quite a bit. All of these creators were in their formative years here and it’s fascinating to watch them grow just within the span of their stories, most notably with Kristiansen’s art. The dystopian and nihilistic nature of the Grendel mythos can make reading a lot of this at once a bit rough (especially the same week as some Supreme Court rulings that are lockstep in line with these stories), but their focus on supporting characters brings some humanity not prevalent in the main narrative. I especially enjoyed the Seagle/ Grist ‘The Devil in Our Midst’ which was sort of like what if Grendel were in the movie The Thing.
I’ve recently made the shift towards mostly only reading omnibuses (omnibi?) and other large collections of comics rather than a lot of smaller individual collections. I switched to collected editions around 15 years ago from monthly comic books and this feels like the right time to make this change. I’m honestly kind of overwhelmed by my book collection at this point, even though I regularly cull it. It’s also a combination of myself and my tastes aging and some things I’ve unlocked about myself in therapy playing a part.
Soey Milk’s new art book Inflorescence came in on Wednesday and it’s a thing of sheer beauty. She’s one of my big influences and this book is a treasure trove of finished paintings paired with studies and graphite drawings to give a better insight into her process.
This week’s ‘new’ episode of The Midnight Special is another country showcase, hosted by guitar wizard Roy Clark. Probably my favorite eras of music are pre-1985ish country, 80’s new wave/ post punk and 70’s R&B and soul, so a concentrated show like this is a gem when it pops up.
NEW COMMISSION: WILD DOG!
I had a collector reach out asking for a painting of the kinda-obscure DC Comics character Wild Dog, created by Max Allan Collins and Terry Beatty. He was also used on the show Arrow, IIRC. This was a lot of fun because it was way outside of my normal scope of work and also the challenge of coming up with my own take on his costume.
This MIGHT be my first time painting a hockey mask and it was hella fun. Anyone looking for a Jason Vorhees painting in the future, him me up!
For the heck of it, I made a cover mockup with the 80’s DC trade dress from when the book originally came out. It’s no Terry Beatty, but I think it’d still work!
COMMISSIONS ARE OPEN!
I think it’d be fun to open commissions back up in a limited way. Here’s the rules:
I’m doing 9x12 watercolors of single figures with a limited background. $250 each, money due up front.
No active AEW or WWE wrestlers, for contractual reasons. But if you want something like a painting of your partner or family member for a gift, or someone from a Marvel movie or a Scorsese film (deep cut joke for film snobs), or pretty much anything else I’ve got you covered. But always feel free to ask if you’re unsure.
These are for personal collectors and are not commercial jobs. If you want to resell the painting, sure, I guess, it’s yours, but this doesn’t grant you a copyright or license to the work for commercial purposes. If that’s something you’re interested in for your company, we can have those talks, but this is something I’m doing for personal collectors.
Sound interesting? Then just reply to this email or send one directly to robschamberger at gmail with what you’re interested in. If it’s something I feel I could do for you I’ll send you a link for payment and an estimate on how long it will take me to finish. I figure I can do about four a month between my other responsibilities. I’ll streamline this process in the coming weeks but this works for now.
Kansas City people know what this is all about.
YOU GOOD?
So, that’s a week of being 44. Katy turned it into a birthday week, spreading the good times out. She cooked up some delicious meals, including a biscuits and gravy casserole and a crock pot buffalo mac and cheese with jack fruit that kind of changed our lives.
On Wednesday Andy was in town and he and I got together for lunch, which was a delightful surprise. I’m fortunate to have friends like him in my life.
Katy and I laid low for the Fourth of July. As any pet owner knows, it’s one of the worst nights of the year for our furry friends and we wanted to be with our cats as our neighborhood is a warzone with the fireworks.
Friday night we went to Kansas City’s longtime mini-golf spot, Cool Crest. Not gonna lie, it’s seen better days. Definitely needs a fresh coat of paint and some landscaping love, but it’s still hella fun. We finished the night in their top-notch arcade and gave our tickets to a little kid on our way out.
What else?
Not much, honestly. I added some flowers to our window box to fill it out a bit, worked on some paintings, and that’s about it. A nice low key week, going towards my goal of a less exciting year than 43 was!
Love you more,
Rob
