Hi. My name's Rob Schamberger. I'm that guy who paints rasslers. And other stuff. Keep your electric eye on me, babe.
WHAT’S NEW?
Same ol’ on my end. Waiting for what I hope is the final hurdle with WWE Shop to be cleared. Should be soon, but I’m not the one who gets to decide that. Meanwhile this past week I was focused in on just making art and keeping things going creatively. I finished up next week’s Sonya Deville and Chelsea Green painting, started work on a new personal collection that I won’t reveal for the next year or so most likely, and made the below painting.
Luckily my escape from stress is making art and FRIEND GUESS WHAT I GET TO DO FOR A LIVING!
LGBTQ ATHLETES
Carl Nassib
Ink and watercolor on 9” x 12” watercolor paper
The first openly gay NFL player!
ICYMI, here's last week's Canvas 2 Canvas episode. Turned out pretty snazzy in my opinion.
UPCOMING VIDEOS
8/6 - Sonya Deville and Chelsea Green
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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WHAT I LIKED THIS WEEK
I listened to the audiobook of Open Season by CJ Box while working this week. It’s the first in the Joe Pickett series (season finale today on Paramount+ by the way! Season two has been WILD.) and liked it as a thing unto itself. The show hewed pretty close to this source material and I’d say the changes it made were for the better, especially in regards to the female characters. But it’s an action-packed thriller of a modern cowboy story and I’m definitely going to continue in the series of books.
Beauty by Kerascoet and Hubert is a gorgeous (haha) graphic novel presenting a mature take on fairy tales, probably closer to the old German ones than what we have now. A young woman is granted a wish by a faerie to become beautiful but as so often happens it goes horribly awry. Kingdoms rise and fall, men are driven insane all while she simply tries to exist.
The last couple episodes of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds have been fantastic examples of how much you can do with a series like this. The crossover with Lower Decks went far beyond my already-high expectations but this week’s episode focusing on war and PTSD was deeply emotional. I’m never ready for Star Trek make me cry, but holy moly did this one get to me. I don’t like that I can recognize when I show gets PTSD right, because I live with it, but yeah, they got it right. Couching that between the lightness of the crossover episode and next week’s musical(!?!) episode was smart, too.
Still the greatest Star Trek crossover in my opinion, though, was the final episode of Webster when he showed up on the Enterprise-D and hung out with Worf. That’s a real thing that really happened.
I haven’t finished watching all of This Fool season two yet (maybe by the time you’re reading this) but I’m in love with what I’ve seen so far! They’ve done an excellent job of fleshing out and growing the characters from season one and putting them in outrageous new situations. The mom’s retirement episode is utterly brilliant, as is Julio’s ‘visionary’ episode.
I went into Special Ops: Lioness with no expectations and was floored by how rad it is. This Zoe Saldana-led show is utterly bad-ass and has the feel of a huge budget. Part war story, part spy thriller, and full of women making the hard decisions that the world keeps putting in front of them. Also: Explosions.
Justified: City Primeval is off to a really strong start. Time has passed since the original series and we change venue to instead focus on Raylan Givens and his daughter Willa, as Raylan investigates the murder of a judge in Detroit. It’s got that balance of grittiness and humor I loved from the first series, but is fresh and unencumbered by that continuity. Which is cool, because I tapped out halfway through the OG but am fully on board with what I’m seeing now.
Easy Star All-Stars’ Ziggy Stardub album is everything I hoped it would be. If you’re unfamiliar with the Easy Star All-Stars, they’re a reggae band who does covers of complete classic albums. The two to hunt down are Dub Side of the Moon and Radiodread, but this new one of the pivotal David Bowie album is outstanding.
Here’s the video for Moonage Daydream with Naomi Cowan and Alex Lifeson. So good:
Did you know if you speed up a reggae song that it becomes a polka?
Cameo by Kima’s foot.
YOU GOOD?
There’s an early progress shot to tease you on what to expect from next week’s Sonya Deville and Chelsea Green painting. It’s a little more design-oriented than some of my other work and I’m pretty dang happy with how it turned out.
Katy and I started planning a trip to Italy next year! It’s part of an art retreat outside of Florence in a gorgeous Tuscan villa and it’s got me super excited. I’ve had my eyes on this for a few months and when the new workshop opened up I booked it immediately. It looks similar to the Greek villa in the movie Before Midnight, which I haven’t been able to get out of my brain since seeing that.
It’s kind of amazing that it doesn’t cost too much more to travel internationally than domestically anymore. Probably more to do with how expensive flights in the US are now.
If you’ve noticed over the past couple years, I’ve been trying really hard to grow as an artist and a trip like this, spending a week with a world-class artist and learning from them in person, surrounded by such beauty, is simply perfect.
Speaking of and as I alluded earlier, I’ve started work on a very personal collection of paintings, probably ten when it’s all done, springing out of the work I’ve been doing in therapy. Probably my least-commercial work to date! But it’s deeply important and will be my most important work, at least to me. We’ll see, but I’m getting a lot out of it so far. More as it develops.
There’s a lot in my life that’s beyond my control and I’m doing what I can to find joy in the things that I can.
Love you more,
Rob
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