Hi. My name's Rob Schamberger. I'm that guy who paints rasslers. And other stuff. I see your true colors.
PAINTING PROCESS
Up top is a new painting I (mostly) finished this week and I thought it’d be fun to take you through some of the process. First, I did a monochromatic underpainting for the woman’s face, black, white and grey’s, and then applied a glaze of pink and purple over it. This is what’s known as ‘indirect painting’, where you work out the tones first and apply the color over it, keeping you from having to mix all of those colors. It’s changed my whole process, honestly.
I added a little more magenta and then used some light pink with some white for the highlights on her face, as well as some more darker violet for her incredible hair.
I did the same indirect painting process for the macaw before adding a light blue glaze.
I then applied some darker blue and green glazes over that initial lighter blue to get some richer color. I also dabbed in some paint and dabbed a water-filled brush into it towards the right, getting it to drip down and create some different textures and feel than a more representational approach. I like that kind of balance, personally.
After adding a few marks of a lighter turquoise to the feathers and lighter blue to the face, I started painting in the flowers. The orchids and the hibiscus are both painted more traditionally, with the idea that having each element painted in a different method will make each stand out without contrasting too much.
I made this as a submission for a thing, so there’ll be at least one background yet to be added depending on whether it’s accepted or not. Two backgrounds if it’s accepted. But more on that in the months to come, I hope.
ICYMI, here's the latest Canvas 2 Canvas episode.
UPCOMING WWE PAINTINGS
Bayley
The Rock
Jade Cargill
Card subject to change.
Hundreds of prints and paintings at Schamberger Labs!
Rob and Jason Arnett's novella Rudow Can't Fail!
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MARCH SCHAMBERGER LABS DISCOUNT CODE
Through the end of March, use the promo code MARCH24 at checkout for 20% off all prints at schambergerlabs.com! This is an exclusive for subscribers, so kayfabe this one. It’s just for you because you’re amazing.
FIGURE DRAWING SESSIONS
I was lucky to have two different figure drawing sessions this week. The above was a two hour pose with our model Doug at Art School KC. I did this one with acrylics on a piece of 9x12 canvas. I hope to do more longer poses like this sooner than later as I’m kinda hooked.
Friday morning we worked with Martika at Joanna’s drawing group. We were told she was ‘bringing props’ and I immediately said, “Oh my god, please let it be a ventriloquist dummy,” but alas it was fabric and a short sword. Great for the Ides of March, though!
The above piece was a 20 minute pose done with watercolor and a parallel pen. The ink in that pen is water soluble so you can do some fun things when you dampen it.
I saw something online during our first break that really got in my head, yes I’m being vague, but I wasn’t delivering the best work until I decided I was done letting that specific (yet vague) topic negatively impact me. So, we had a quick 10 minute pose to close out and my pen was running out of ink so I made this quick piece that I’m rather happy with. There’s a looseness to it I find compelling.
WHAT I LIKED LAST WEEK
Last Sunday ahead of The Oscars, Katy and I watched a couple of the contenders we hadn’t seen yet.
Anatomy of a Fall is a real stunner. A man dies, the wife is the main suspect, and the only witness is their blind son. It’s a highly compelling examination of truth versus perception that boldly puts the decision of what really happened on the viewer.
American Fiction balances the high wire act of being about social commentary, humor, and genuinely human. A talented black author can’t break through and finds himself suddenly in need of money to take care of his dementia-stricken mother. He assumes a pseudonym and gives in to publisher’s demands to ‘write more black’, which sets off an outrageous series of events which holds a mirror up to our own society.
I finished watching Twin Peaks: The Return, which also completes my viewing of all of Twin Peaks. Friend, I have thoughts. I hadn’t watched The Return yet and am blown away at the 18 hour David Lynch-driven experience that it is. To be this far in his life and career and to make an achievement like this is inspiring as hell. So. My thoughts. A few weeks ago I told you about my theory that Laura Palmer was in fact never killed and that instead she suffered a death of personality, with everything we see in the series actually being her dissociated mind trying to make sense of the repetitive trauma at the hands of her father. Fire Walk With Me really spells that out, I feel.
But. After watching The Return, I now have a new theory that there was no Laura Palmer at all and that instead all of this is in Audrey Horne’s fractured mind, implying that the trauma was at the hands of her own father and that the Palmers were personas her mind created. Episode 16 of The Return put this idea forward, I think. With a little time pondering it there’s another thing that plays into this: The source of all evil in the town comes from The Black Lodge, while she lives in The Great Northern Hotel. Lodges are often referred to as Hotels. I’ve also read that Lynch and Mark Frost at one point toyed around with a spin-off series for Audrey called, wait for it, Mulholland Drive. This was retooled to be a Lynch movie where everything exists in a woman’s dreams.
Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.
Also, you know by now that I’ve become a huge fan of the 1970’s live music show The Midnight Special. I’m an old man and I like old man things. Get off my lawn. I write these newsletters Saturday evenings while the ‘latest’ episode plays, as a matter of fact. Anyway, here’s an episode with Jose Feliciano doing an unreal cover of Purple Haze and Linda Ronstadt GETTING DOWN with her band, which happens to include Steely Dan’s Jeff ‘Skunk’ Baxter killing it on the bongos. Yes, I just wrote that sentence. You’ll see.
YOU GOOD?
I’m…doing my best. A lot of self-care, a lot of thoughts about what I want to do in my near and longterm future, and making a lot of art. I finished the painting up top this week, started the new Rock one, and started my next Emotion Series painting which is proving to possibly be my most ambitious one yet. Plus the figure drawing sessions!
A few weeks back my therapist had me write out a timeline of my life based around when extraordinarily hard things happened and how I handled each of them. One of the things I learned from this was that my drive to be an artist has been consistent throughout. From the moment that was activated in my 8 year old brain it’s never gone away and has often been directly tied to my ability to process trauma and continue to move forward.
That’s not going to change.
Love you more,
Rob