SHOP TALK: Rob Schamberger Newsletter 04AUG24

I've got the D, double O, D double O style.

Aug 04, 2024

Hi. My name's Rob Schamberger. I'm that guy who paints rasslers. And other stuff. Kenny Rogers' Gambler is my gambling theme.

WORDS

Here’s a little more progress on my next Emotion Series painting. Not a whole lot since last week due to rasslin’ responsibilities. I have to pay the bills, after all. I’m also a little more deliberate with this one as it’s going to be either at the limit of or just beyond my current skill level. Because of that I’m a lot more thoughtful and deliberate with each bit I paint and can’t really go into my normal near-meditative state when I’m working. There’s going to be more to this one than I’m accustomed to doing and using techniques that I haven’t used in the way I’m going to, so yeah, a lot of thinking about each step to make sure the next step works right.

This one’s going to be for ‘Afraid’, and in talking about each of these in therapy I’ve learned that I often experience the very emotion I’m focusing on in each piece. It’s a part of reaching an authentic truth with them, both with myself and with the viewer. So yeah, it’s only natural that I’m experiencing a degree of fear around my process with this one. Fear that I’ll do it wrong, fear that I’ll confirm the voices in my head that tell me I’m not good enough, fear that I’ll start believing those voices, fear that I already do, and so on.

Stuff that doesn’t happen when I’m working on a portrait of a pro wrestler.

LOL, that happens with everything that I do.

Here’s a preview of Thursday’s new Britt Baker, DMD painting. I’m expecting this one to be kinda popular maybe.

UPCOMING AEW/PWT PAINTINGS

Britt Baker, DMD
Willow Nightingale - SIGNED
Orange Cassidy - SIGNED

Card subject to change.

Rob’s Art on ShopAEW
###
Rob and Jason Arnett's novella Rudow Can't Fail!
###
Rob’s prints and shirts at Pro Wrestling Tees
###
Instagram
Threads
Cara
YouTube

WHAT I LIKED THIS WEEK

Wow, Batman: Caped Crusader is fantastic. Like so many people my age, Batman: The Animated Series and its aesthetic was deeply impactful, so Bruce Timm reviving this look and feel with head writers like Ed Brubaker is a welcome return. I also appreciate that it’s fully its own thing and a very different approach to the characters and their city. Also, there’s a kitchen scene in episode seven that feels like it’s right out of The Raid with its physical brutality. Worth your time.

I finished listening to the audiobook for Tai-Pan by James Clavell and was really taken by its epic scope. The sequel to Clavell’s Shogun, it’s a historical fiction about the early days of Britain taking control of Hong Kong. While it’s Eurocentric in its perspective, it’s definitely not in a favorable light. Clavell subtly yet regularly shows just how dumb and hubristic the European colonizers were, especially when encountering a civilization in China that was centuries older than their own.

It also serves as a meditation on the uselessness of individuals who look to make grand plans at the cost of all around them. The lead character is constantly manipulating everyone to his own benefit, leading to many deaths and multiple broken shells of people left behind and it ultimately asks: For what?

After finishing that up I needed something a little less dense and was delighted to find out about Owning Up by George Pelecanos, a collection of short stories by one of my favorite authors. I don’t know how I missed that this came out back in February, but better late than never! Hey, I had a lot going on in the first quarter of the year. Each story in this collection revolves around the idea of crime as an inciting event and what it reveals about the people in its orbit. He also does a fascinating thing with a lot of these where there’s huge jumps forward in time, so that we can see the long term effects of these events, occasionally even on a generational basis. Really excellent stuff.

I finished reading the second Predator: The Original Years Omnibus on Monday, collecting the rest of Dark Horse’s Predator comics. For me, the gem of this is the Hell and Hot Water storyline by Mark Schultz and Gene Colan, because, like…GENE COLAN. But there’s a lot of fun stuff in here and the somewhat ongoing Hunters stories that wrapped up the run were cool in their attempt to bring all of these disparate characters together around a group that are taking the hunt back to the Predators. It’s a lot of big dumb fun, as it should be.

Kommix by Charles Burns is a cool art book showcasing covers for comic books that don’t exist, all done in Burns’ singular disturbing style. They’re slightly twisted takes on traditional non-superhero comics from the 50’s, speaking to the underbelly of American society versus the polished sitcom version that was sold. It’s given me some ideas for elements I can add to the project I’m planning after I finish up The Emotion Series, actually.

I lose 2-5 subscribers every time I send out a newsletter and it’s been that way since I stopped working with my prior client. Let’s see how many this one costs me! Take a shot every time someone hits the Unsubscribe button! Where do they go? Abducted by aliens? The deep state probing them? Running off into the woods with Bigfoot and DB Cooper? Join me, perhaps YOU may be able solve an unsolved mystery…

She’s the boss, applesauce.

YOU GOOD?

Like I mentioned up top, this week was busy with AEW paintings. I got 3 done and am starting the fourth of this batch tomorrow. There’s a whole approval process, so ‘card subject to change’ as always but this will cover Mark Briscoe, Mariah May, Dustin Rhodes and Kamille. You’re not ready for this Dustin Rhodes piece, especially. You’ll see. I’ve painted Dustin, an old pal, several times over the years and the others are all firsts for me.

What else? Not much.

We’re in the midst of a heat wave and so far the garden’s holding up. I had a couple tomato plants come up on their own from discarded tomatoes last year. They might be a little late in the season to fruit but we’ll see. The cats are good. Katy and I had a fun date night on Thursday at a pub trivia thing. We came in fifth place! Normally we’re fifth-from-last so this was a big improvement. I think we came in third once. Usually we’re fair-to-middling. When we don’t know the answer we lean into tanking it as bad as possible in the hopes of making the emcee break. He called us MF’ers this time and we’re proud.

That’s about it. A low key week, nothing big happening which is just fine by me.

Love you more,
Rob