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Hi. My name's Rob Schamberger. I'm that guy who paints rasslers. And other stuff. I don't want the news, I won't live by it.

My favorite subjects to paint are the ones who are already going for it visually because it gives me so much more to work with. So naturally Darby Allin falls into that category! His face paint and his overall aura allow me to push things further than I might with other paintings.

That said, I was still kind of stuck on how to proceed with this painting so I did some sketches and a study first to find my way into it.

You can see I did six tiny thumbnail sketches mostly to work out the color combinations and placement of the background design element. I used a couple of them to do the study, which I’m glad I did first here because it didn’t quite have enough energy and was a little too monochromatic. I added some warm tones in for the final as well as some textural elements to make the whole thing sing.

You can also see in the progress photo that I did an underpainting with Payne’s Gray Violet to mark the tones and shadows as a sort of an ‘indirect painting’ method. The violet Payne’s Gray (I use Golden QoR’s variety right now) creates some rich shadows and mid-tones when I then layer the other colors over it. It’s a new technique I’ll use that’s so against everything I was taught for watercolor, where you normally want to go from light to dark but I gotta say: It works!

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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Bluesky
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YouTube

To my taste, one of the top-to-bottom best comic book artists ever was Wally Wood. He may not be as well-known to younger audiences but he left an indelible impact on the art form. He was an exceptional draftsman who had a wonderful knack for balancing realism and stylization. You can see that in the example above from one of his Weird Science covers, with his figure work against that lovely wall of gizmos and levers and dials. As an artist, I can’t help but look at that background and think about how fun something like that would be.

(And yes it’s THAT Weird Science, the same one that inspired the movie and TV show and that song that’s now stuck in your head again.)

He also had a knack for the real-world stuff, like with the well-recognized ‘Came the Dawn’ short story. I mean, just LOOK at that establishing shot in the first panel. Look at all of the ways that the room is populated with items to make the whole experience so rich and a treat for the eyes.

In the early days of Marvel he had a notable run on Daredevil and famously created Ol’ Hornhead’s iconic red costume. Notably Wood drew the issue where Daredevil fights the Submariner, still considered one of the best issues of 1960’s Marvel. The characters move and interact in such innovative ways that would still stand out today.

Wood’s body of work has a ton of notable installments like MAD! Magazine (especially SuperDuperMan, which was Alan Moore’s primary inspiration for Miracleman and Watchmen), the THUNDER Agents, Cannon, that one particular Disney drawing (look it up, but not while you’re at work!); but I want to leave you with maybe his biggest yet inadvertent gifts to fellow artists: The 22 Panels That Always Work! This was originally made as a gag about wordy writers who don’t give much action for artists to draw, but it’s also a master class in composition that works for all visual artists, not just comics artists. If you were unfamiliar with this before: You’re welcome!

By all accounts he was a difficult man and had a sad end to his life but golly, what a treasure trove of beauty and inspiration that Wally Wood left behind.

Here’s a few more little paintings I’ve made of the houses in my neighborhood, as surprise gifts for each of them. They’re also great practice for the plein air painting event I’m participating in this weekend.

What’s fun about these three are that they’re across and further down the street, so even though I’ve driven by them for years I’ve never taken time to actually look at them. They’re behind trees and I’m, like, paying attention to the road so I go right on by them. Doing these paintings forces me to slow down and pay attention to the beauty in each of them.

This house especially, I remarked on this phenomenon to my wife and she admitted that she doesn’t know that she’s ever actually looked at the house. Next week I plan to hand these all out and I gotta say, not only did I not pay attention to the house I don’t know that I’m aware of who’s living there! That’s the biggest part of the exercise, to share some joy with my neighbors and to get a little familiarity with them.

There’s so much tearing us all apart every day, finding reasons to connect are so truly important.

Love you more,
Rob