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Hi. My name's Rob Schamberger. I'm that guy who paints rasslers. And other stuff. One more chance to chase a dream.

There’s just something about the visual of a guy holding a stick with violent intentions, right? Especially one with a bunch of spikes in it. I’ve made several paintings of Adam ‘Cope’ Copeland over the past dozen or so years and something I like about him as a subject is that he’s constantly giving me something new to work with. I think it’s that he’s an artist as well, with a lot of the same formative inspirations that I have myself, that makes us such a natural fit.

With this painting in particular something clicked as I neared the end of it that I didn’t intend. A lot of those blooms of pigment in the shadows especially happened on their own and I opted to leave them in because it transformed the whole feel of the piece. I also like how these pastel colors contrast against the violence of the figure and the weapon, making them all feel more intense.

Card subject to change.

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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I’m in the midst of reading the new omnibus collection of The ‘Nam by Doug Murray, Michael Golden, Wayne Vansant and friends and I’m struck all over again at just how great Golden’s art is in it. Mike’s a major touchpoint for a lot of comics artists who followed him because his style is so dynamic in its balance of cartooning and implied realism. Like, as an artist looking at his stuff I’m immediately like, “Oh, I want to do something like that little bit there, or this detail here.” You can’t escape it.

But what’s hitting me this time around is the draftsmanship of it all. Like, Mike doesn’t just have a great style but he makes bulletproof compositions. It’s something that a lot of the artists who were first influenced by him didn’t quite understand: There’s the WAY you draw something and there’s also the SOMETHING you’re drawing. A well-drawn figure on its own is nice but not special. It’s the way that Golden integrates them into a scene that’s special. And man, the way he uses helicopters to break up space and frame a composition is as dynamic as any war movie ever made.

And then there’s THIS PAGE that goes a whole other level to have not just nice figures and compositions but they’re put together panel after panel to tell a story. In my opinion this is one of the single best pages ever published through Marvel Comics because of the mood that it sells. It’s lived in my imagination from the first time I saw it when I was 9 or 10 years old. It’s that quiet moment right before everything gets loud, with that next-to-last panel creating a level of suspense you’re hard to find outside of an Alfred Hitchcock movie.

If you haven’t checked it out, The ‘Nam is one of the very best comics Marvel has ever published and Golden drew the first dozen or so issues. Well worth your time to check them out

On Sunday evening I had a particularly good figure drawing session with my longtime model Doug. I don’t know what it was but I feel like it was my best one yet. It clicked.

I wasn’t trying anything new and didn’t have any sort of goal in mind, I was simply in the moment and acting as the conduit between my model and my brush. There’s a concept I approach live model sessions with, based on something I learned in therapy. The brain is a machine that’s main goal is predicting, secondary is to predict as efficiently as possible, and the third, if it even tries, is to be correct. With figure drawing I’m not trying to be accurate or to make a finished piece, I’m trying to be as pure to my brain as possible.

And on Sunday I guess my brain wanted to make something that looks pleasant, too. Often I’ll randomly select colors or not know what a color in my travel kit will look like when it’s activated with water and I then go with it. It was this 15 minute pose where I thought, “Hey, this is actually solid!” I like the color palette and the warm shadows in the face. Had a sort of mid-century American illustration vibe I wasn’t trying for at all.

This 20 minute pose wasn’t easy at all to do, with how Doug posed himself. But it’s the challenge that I enjoy the most about doing this, so I leaned into it. I used a similar palette to the one before, which worked out well. It’s not perfect but there’s a vibe to it that probably wouldn’t work if I was trying to be wholly accurate.

Finally, we had a longer pose so I tried to have a little more accuracy to the figure. Which is funny because in the studio 35 minutes is barely time to get anything done as I have such a different and more deliberate approach. Another thing that I find valuable with live model sessions is that it forces me to work differently and to loosen up. That’s something I can bring back to my studio work, at least for certain elements.

In art, as in other aspects of life, there’s an energy that can’t be duplicated when you fall short of perfection. An idea of a thing can often have more power than the thing itself.

Love you more,
Rob