SHOP TALK: Rob Schamberger Newsletter 09MAR25

Just ten thousand reflections of my own sweet self.

Mar 09, 2025

Hi. My name's Rob Schamberger. I'm that guy who paints rasslers. And other stuff. Mirror in the bathroom, recompense for all my crimes of self defense.

The uncensored version of this will be posted on Bluesky so that you don’t get in trouble at work. Bosses are weird, right?

WORDS

NEEDS: SELF-CONNECTION

Watercolor on 12” x 16” watercolor paper

Acknowledging your thoughts, feelings and desires without judgment and treating yourself with the same kindness and understanding you would offer to a dear friend.

I think this is my best work from the series so far. Really happy with how it turned out.

This wraps up the self-actualization needs, done with model Joanna. Here’s the others from this set:

Purpose, Privacy, Variety, Autonomy, Pleasure/Joy, Creativity, Discovery and Beauty/ Gratitude

This is the second set of the Human Needs Series, following the physiological ones I did with model Zelda:

Comfort, Physical Activity, Water, Rest, Food, Relaxation and Sex

A huge thanks to my good friend, collaborator and photographer Paul Andrews for his excellent work with the reference shoots. Next up will be the safety needs with my longtime model and friend Doug. Expect a heavy Caravaggio influence with my paintings of him, as he has a wonderful classical look.

Here’s a preview of Thursday’s new Thunder Rosa painting. This one was TOUGH to make but I’m happy with how it turned out. You’ll see.

UPCOMING AEW/PWT PAINTINGS

Thunder Rosa - SIGNED
Samoa Joe
Julia Hart
Will Ospreay
Mercedes Mone

Card subject to change.

MYSTERY MAN

Here’s the colored page for the two-page spread for pages 2 and 3. Fun! I felt like it was feeling a little too flat with the coloring I did on the first page so I added some texture into the background. Like I said last week, I think I spent longer on this than I did the whole 6 page comic back when I was 13.

Here’s the final inked page, done on a huge piece of 19x24 bristol board:

I could not be happier with how the parallel pen and water soluble ink I used for the building on the left worked out. Gave it that grittiness I was after to create a sense of depth between it and Mystery Man’s figure versus the buildings on the right.

And one more time for comparison’s sake, here’s the original I drew back when I was 13:

VENGEANCE!

When I first started this project I was planning to use my original captions but now I’m developing a new script to go along with this that better matches my motivations to make this now at this point in my life and keeping the dialogue going with my younger self.

I’ve also decided I’m going to paint a cover for this with acrylics, which should be fun. Indirect painting with glazes of color will be really similar to how I’m coloring these pages digitally.

This is all practice for a bigger project I’m looking to start in a few months for a hybrid graphic novel/ artbook that will run between 100-200 pages. Mystery Man may even be a character in it, but I haven’t decided yet. It’s the project I’ve been working towards for around a year now.

Your feelings are real and valid.

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

Daredevil: Born Again is off to a good start. Listen, I LOVED the original show’s first season and found the rest of the run to be diminishing returns but Born Again seems to get back to basics. We haven’t had that ‘hallway scene moment’ from the OG show’s second episode yet but that’s a pretty hard bar to clear.

QUICK DIGRESSION: That hallway scene and of course The Raid movies are such a how-to for choreographing fight scenes and I wish it’d caught on a little more, even in pro wrestling. That realism in that it takes several strikes to take out an opponent, and even after half a minute each strike takes a bit out of the one doling out the blows.

There’s a moment at the end of the first episode of Born Again where TV on the Radio’s Staring at the Sun is playing and Matt Murdock gets bathed in red light that gave me honest chills. I love that song and this gave me good motivation (as if I needed it!) to listen to their album Desperate Youth, Blood Thirsty Babes again.

I was excited to get my hands on Grendel: Devil’s Crucible - Defiance by Matt and Brennan Wagner, the latest Grendel Prime adventure. Set hundreds of years past Prime’s original adventures, he now is making his way through a destroyed Earth, fighting off vampires with huge ballsacks (really) and trying to find his place in a world that’s become utterly foreign. Matt Wagner’s another strong contender for one of the best cartoonists working in comics nowadays and his son Brennan’s coloring is a perfect match for Matt’s line work and overall atmosphere.

Over the past couple weeks I’ve been making my way through reading the Guardians of the Galaxy: Quest for the Shield Epic Collection. These are the original Guardians from the future, not the ones popularized in the movies. Their 90’s Jim Valentino-helmed series started shortly after I started reading comics so it has a special place in my nostalgia heart. I hadn’t actually read anything with the characters prior to that series and this collects a lot of those in addition to the first six issues of the 1990 series, including the Korvac Saga from The Avengers. There’s fun stuff in those earlier appearances but some of it ages poorly and others are just kind of overwritten, although there’s some pretty art to be found.

The latest episode of The Town dives into how exactly Nielsen ratings work, which is fascinating. You always hear about ratings but it seems like a lot of gobbledygook and this was pretty helpful to hear.

Love!

YOU GOOD?

Last night was my friends Tommy and Mary Beth’s 55th wedding anniversary party. They got a space for a big group of us to get together and celebrate their love. If you notice instruments behind them, that’s because they turned around and rocked out with their friends and grandkids. Simply the coolest people.

They and part of their family were in my final Emotion Series painting Accepted. Their son Tom is one of my very best friends, one of my co-best men along with his cousin Andy at my wedding. I’ve become close with everyone in the family and couldn’t feel more lucky to know them.

I’ve found it’s a thing, these incredible families that then bring awkward people like me into their orbit. I started off as friends with Andy, then he introduced me to Tom. Soon enough their families adopted me in. I’m lucky, because there’s a lot of my desire to be a better person that comes from being around all of them.

Especially in such uncertain and divisive times there’s something important about intentionally being around people who want to be around you as well, who accept you for the person that you are.

Love you more,
Rob