WHY I LOVE FIGURE DRAWING: Rob Schamberger Newsletter 14APR24
'Cause I try, and I try, and I try, and I try.
Hi. My name's Rob Schamberger. I'm that guy who paints rasslers. And other stuff. He’s telling me more and more about some useless information supposed to fire my imagination.
WHAT’S NEW?
Katy and I are in the midst of our first rewatch of Mad Men since it originally aired and golly is this show a visual treat. As a palette cleanser while I was between paintings for my big secret project I whipped up this 7x10 watercolor painting of Jon Hamm as Don Draper. I’m a fan of this time period’s aesthetics which made this a lot of fun to paint.
It’s funny, for having not seen the show since it originally aired over a decade ago, I still remember whole swaths of dialogue and know immediately what each episode is about as soon as it starts. It had a huge impact on me, I guess, and now having around 5 years of therapy under my belt I see why it resonated so much. Don Draper: Not a Good Guy! A little too similar to some people in my life!
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Rob and Jason Arnett's novella Rudow Can't Fail!
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WHAT I LIKED LAST WEEK
Unstoppable Doom Patrol by Dennis Culver and Chris Burnham is the latest take on these characters and it’s a fun approach. It does a good job of integrating all of their various histories, from the original Arnold Drake stuff to Paul Kupperberg’s (drawn by the late, great Steve Lightle) to the genre-defying Grant Morrison run to the latest by Gerard Way. What I liked most about this approach was that it wasn’t about punching villains, but instead acting as a sort of metahuman mental health services. Embracing the freaks and weirdos instead of locking them up. More like this. More superheroes based on firefighters and EMT’s, please.
Predator Versus Wolverine by Ben Percy and a Who’s Who of Artists is a ridiculously fun comic book. The same Predator has been hunting Wolverine since the early 1900’s and Logan is forced into a final conflict with the creature. Each time period is drawn by a different artist, each obviously having a blast drawing it.
I saw that the original Lonesome Dove TV mini-series is streaming on Peacock so I was excited to finally watch it. I’m a big fan of the first two books by Larry McMurtry and found this to be a perfect adaptation. It’s been heralded as one of the best depictions of life in those times and I can’t find any fault in that. It holds up magnificently, with a cast including Robert Duvall, Tommy Lee Jones, Danny Glover, Diane Lane, Robert Urich, Anjelica Huston, Chris Cooper and even a young Steve Buscemi. My next-door neighbor is the spitting image of Duvall in this and he told me back when it first aired in 1989 that it made him mighty popular with the ladies!
FREE SHIPPING IN APRIL
At Schamberger Labs this month, we’ve got free shipping up to $7 with the promo code APRILSHIP. That covers most basic shipping. Take advantage of it while you can!
Something to think about. 1 minute pose.
WHY I LOVE FIGURE DRAWING
I was fortunate to have two different figure drawing sessions this week, one Tuesday evening and the other midday Friday. Interestingly for me this time around was that both were with the same model, Mark.
10 minute pose
It was my first time working with him and I was really blown away by his poses and his awareness of his body. He’s a trained stage actor, so he was providing some rad theatrical poses. It really sunk in that just like every artist has their own unique style, each model does as well. One of our regular models, Doug, has a very classical approach to his poses while another model, Joanna, has a professional background as a dancer and that comes through when working with her. It’s fascinating, really.
10 minute pose
Back in the Vaudeville days, there was a saying that a performer needed somewhere to go be lousy, to work it out of their system. You see that with standup comedy, where a comedian works small clubs to build up their material before ideally doing it in big venues and eventually for a special. Pro wrestlers have the same thing, first working in the indies, then medium-sized promotions and even in WWE, when working house shows.
For me, figure drawing is a place for me to ‘go be lousy,’ to work things out stylistically and craft-wise. I don’t have to worry about selling this work or displaying it, I simply get to create for creation’s sake and learn from the process.
1 hour pose
The challenge you’re presented with as an artist is that these are all timed poses, so it’s about getting as much across as possible with the time you have. Normally you start with 1 minute poses to loosen up, called gesture drawings. Putting down a few lines to get the idea across of a figure. Then you typically scale up in time, or you might jump right into a longer pose. It all depends.
20 minute pose
A lot of times I’m happier with the energy I get across in a shorter pose, even if the likeness isn’t there. 10-20 minute poses are where a lot of those legendary ‘happy accidents’ happen, which I really value. There’s a philosophy that every new work an artist makes is informed by everything they’ve made up to that point. What went right, what went wrong, and what happened accidentally that we can replicate on purpose in the future. How long does it take me to paint a picture? A lifetime. So those happy accidents are delightful every time.
Like in the piece above, the way the ink bled into the wash around the edges is interesting. Some of the marks I made here out of the necessity of time are also interesting.
20 minute pose
Going back to the idea of a piece being informed by everything I’ve done prior, this 20 minute pose from Friday was definitely in conversation with the 1 hour pose from Tuesday night. I used a lot of the same color palette here and didn’t have to stop and think about how I would build up the tones, because I’d already worked that out prior. That’s valuable.
40 minute pose
I also like to just try things out. Each new piece during a session is an opportunity to try something new. Since this was a 40 minute pose, I slowed down and was a little more deliberate with each brushstroke. But I also wanted to keep a lot of the loose energy from the prior poses. Also, 40 minutes may seem like an eternity after 1-20 minute poses but it’s still relatively little time compared to spending hours a day in the studio. That time FLIES by.
I picked a lot of arbitrary warm and cool colors that weren’t there in life but wanted it to still ‘read’ as something that could. I’m happy with the energy that came across.
So, why do I love figure drawing with a live model? It’s the learning aspect of it all. Even though we don’t have any sort of formal instructor, it’s the doing of it that informs me. I feel like since I started doing this regularly early last year that it’s improved my work overall, but at the end of the day I just love doing it. And that’s something to hold onto.
Love you more,
Rob