SHOP TALK: Rob Schamberger Newsletter 25MAY25
Staring blindly into space.
Hi. My name's Rob Schamberger. I'm that guy who paints rasslers. And other stuff. Sitting cross-legged on the floor.
WORDS
Last weekend Katy and I went to Chicago, our first non-holiday vacation since going to Italy exactly a year ago. More on that later, but our sleeping schedules are a little different with me waking up pretty early normally. I brought a watercolor pad and my travel set of paints so that I could go down to the hotel lobby each morning before she woke up.
I spent a couple hours on each of the above painting studies, one of an ornamental dragon statue at the Chicago Institute of Art and the other of a fun tin robot toy from the Toy & Miniature Museum here in Kansas City. I liked both of them enough to do more polished studies when I got back to the studio:
The travel paint set I have now has pretty dang good colors in it, but they’re still not as vibrant as my studio paints. I still kept pretty close to what I used in the first pass with the palette, just a little more muted.
I went the opposite way with the toy robot, wanting it to be more vibrant and saturated but still keeping a lot of those placement choices. If you like art of these retro robot toys, I highly recommend taking a look at the works of Eric Joyner who does spectacular work.
I also had a little extra time this week before starting in on the next batch of AEW stuff and worked up this piece of Shadow Netwalker II, one of the Algonauts from the graphic novel I’m developing. They fight machine gun-wielding skeletons sometimes, as one does. Probably going to be some ninja robots soon, too. Inked by hand on 9x12 bristol board, colored digitally. Golly, this stuff is fun. I plan to do at least one of these a week to get everything worked out for the book’s visuals. Princess Lilac Wing will be the next one, I think.
By the way, the green barbarian guy from last week has been named Krahmman because why the hell not.
Some solid advice from Superman in 1950:
UPCOMING AEW/PWT PAINTINGS
Speedball Mike Bailey
Konosuke Takeshita
Kris Statlander
Josh Alexander
Willow
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
WHAT I LIKED THIS WEEK
Coming into Andor only a couple weeks before its finale was a pretty great experience. It meant I didn’t have to wait too long to get the whole experience, and what an experience it is. It’s a Star Wars story for adults, which is probably why it’s critically acclaimed but the viewership is lower. The franchise tends to lean towards an all-ages audience, now with a healthy dose of nostalgia, but this show eschewed all of that in favor of a tale about resistance against ever-escalating authoritarianism.
Don’t know why that resonates right now.
I came into Murderbot knowing nothing except what I’d seen in the trailer and man is it a delight. A killer robot with PTSD gains free will, but hides all of that in fear of being destroyed should that be discovered by the humans it’s supposed to be programmed to defend. And it watches a lot of trashy sci-fi shows. And blows things up. It’s based on a series of books by Martha Wells that are definitely going on my to-read stack.
The Studio season one was a seriously fun ride. Instead of the serialized nature of shows we’re accustomed to now, it’s instead a season of self-contained episodes, each based around a joke that is built to and earned. I expected something in the vein of Entourage but instead it’s a gorgeously-shot Larry Sanders Show or Curb Your Enthusiasm, a workplace comedy based around show business. But again, they’re also all gorgeously-shot and don’t look like much anything else out there. Hell of an achievement.
I finished up reading the Lost Marvels: Tower of Shadows collection and it far exceeded my expectations. It’s a previously-never-collected horror story from the late 60’s featuring Marvel’s best artists doing some of their best work. I had previously only ever seen the Steranko story and wasn’t prepared for the gorgeous works from the likes of Gene Colan, Barry Windsor-Smith and Wally Wood. The writing’s a mixed bag, ranging from interesting to competent to lousy but the art is uniformly fabulous. Owes more to Tales From the Crypt than House of Mystery or Marvel’s pre-Silver Age monster books, especially since it’s got Wood and even Johnny Craig contributing.
On the plane to Chicago I read Saga volume 12 by Brian K Vaughan and Fiona Staples. It’s aggravating that there’s books this damn good out there, when you’re a creator yourself. Gorgeously-drawn with three-dimensional characters experiencing huge science fiction adventures with very real and well-earned emotions. Couldn’t be better.
While in Chicago we try to always make a stop at Challengers Comics+Conversation, owned and operated by the incomparable Patrick and Dal. Here’s the books I got based on Dal’s recommendations:
Radiant Black volume 1 by Kyle Higgins, Marcelo Costa and Cherish Chen is something that’s been on my radar but I’d never pulled the trigger on until now. This first volume is a solid start to what they call The Massiveverse, a series of interconnected superhero/ tokusatsu characters and their adventures to save the world from appropriately massive threats.
Frankenstein by Michael Walsh has a truly fresh and interesting way into retelling the story from the original Universal Studios movie. It adds a series of flashbacks about the various body parts and the lives (and deaths) of the people they belonged to. How cool, right? It adds a pretty major character to the mythos in the form of a young boy who’s hoping to reconnect with his recently-departed father. Walsh’s art is appropriately bold and creepy to match the vibe of the film, too.
The Power Fantasy volume 1 by Kieron Gillen and Caspar Wijngaard is one I came in completely blind to, having never read anything by either creator before. It’s a real-world look at what would happen if people actually existed with world-threatening powers, as allegories for nuclear weapons. It’s more Akira than Justice League, or a Watchmen where the characters all were Dr Manhattan-level. It’s properly epic in scope while still very down-to-earth with its emotions. Really excited for the next volume to come out on this.
Transformers volume 1 by Daniel Warren Johnson is a killer romp of a book. Dal described it as Johnson taking a 90’s Image Comics approach to the 80’s cartoon, so it’s still immature in its fun but hyper-violent in its action. Kind of also a Dragonball Z feel to that, maybe. Or where EVERYTHING is to the level of the original animated movie. I was a fan of the cartoon and especially the toys as a kid but overall haven’t engaged with much since outside of Beast Wars. Listen, I aged out and that’s perfectly fine. But this is fun stuff worth checking out and Johnson’s art is killer.
FIGURE DRAWING
Friday morning I went to my first figure drawing session in a few months at a beautiful park here in town. Our models Joanna and Brock did a wonderful job. Above are two 5 minute poses and below are two 25 minute poses.
I took photos of everything and plan to do finished paintings of the two 25 minute poses down the line. There was something magical about how the red shadow went across Brock’s face from the umbrella that I want to spend more time with. And the vast scenery framing Joanna in her black dress gave an Andrew Wyeth feel that I want to sink my teeth into and spend some time with.
Some buildings and a street, I guess.
YOU GOOD?
So, Chicago! We went in Friday and came back Monday. A bit of a long weekend around Katy going to see Beyonce on Sunday night. Originally she was going on her own but I tagged along so that we could go to the art museum on Saturday.
We’ve become big museum nerds and that was a must for me. I knew they had an amazing collection, but I truly wasn’t prepared for just how vast and important. For instance, like I talked about on Thursday I had my breath taken away seeing those Van Gogh’s. Each Thursday for the next few weeks I’ll share some of the pieces that have stuck with me.
The other highlight of the weekend was the breakfasts we had on Saturday and Sunday from a place around the corner called Egg Tuck. We don’t have them here in KC, it looks like they also have locations in Los Angeles and Austin, TX but got dang that was some good food. Their Sriracha aioli is something I’m definitely going to try to recreate.
It was nice doing a little trip, just for the joy of doing it. It’s wild, this was the first time I’ve flown in a year and I used to do it all of the time. Though rarely for pleasure! Last year’s career change is something I’ll be unwinding in my brain for a while, I guess. It’s pretty similar emotionally to ending a longterm relationship, so there will be occasional things that will bring a lot of those thoughts and feelings back up to the surface as I reorient different activities to my new status quo.
As one does.
But seriously, those Egg Tuck breakfast burritos are the Real Deal Holyfield.
Love you more,
Rob
Thanks for the Challengers love, Rob!!