Hi. My name's Rob Schamberger. I'm that guy who paints rasslers. And other stuff. Lots of other stuff.

Along with artists from around the world, I was fortunate to study under master watercolor artist Olga Litvinenko for a week in the Tuscan countryside. I have no formal training as an artist and jumped on this opportunity to learn and grow.

Olga has a very different approach to watercolor than myself and I’ll admit to being mystified by it all the first few days. It’s really hard to spend decades working one way and then setting that aside to paint another way. I…had mixed results, at least from looking at what I intended to do versus what I accomplished. She’s mastered wet-on-wet watercolor, while I use a layered indirect painting approach. It was like being an electrician trying to fix some plumbing. But as you’ll read, the whole purpose I gave myself was to push myself outside of my comfort area so that I can continue to grow.

Olga also speaks Russian and very little English, so there was a lot of translation going on with some things lost between. That’s the nature of this sort of thing and eventually I got the rhythm of it. She was very kind and supportive to me throughout.

That’s the painting I bought from Olga. I mean…wow. It’s from a sculpture in Florence, so I thought it was the perfect piece to commemorate the entire experience. She’s heavily influenced by Classical Italian art along with modern approaches and a bit of taste from Japan and China. She operates on a whole other level.

“This one like you,” she said in broken English.

I laughed, thinking she was referencing…well, you know.

“No, he is great man. You…you are great man.”

Maybe some day I’ll believe her.

Here’s the art I made over the week:

After a couple painting demos, Olga had us do several watercolor-only sketches of our model, working out composition and color choices. A fascinating way to work that I really enjoyed. We then penciled out our guidelines for our paintings before starting proper on them. My first model was Fede who was incredible to work with. Here’s the finished painting:

The way the light danced off of her skin was inspiring.

Next up we switched models, this time with Maria who was amazingly working as a model for the first time. Here’s the finished painting:

I wasn’t particularly happy with this one. I had a vision for what I wanted it to be and fell short in execution. I REALLY got in my own head here and it took some wind out of my sails the rest of the evening after class ended. I put all of this pressure on myself and often become my own worst enemy.

We only had our models the first three days and worked from photos the next two days. Fede let me take a couple photos of her that I used as reference for this next one. When I showed the above sketch to Olga she said, “This is what you’re going to do?”

“Uh…yeah?”

“Good luck.”

But I felt I needed to redeem myself after the prior day and really cut loose, making what I feel was my best of the week:

“You are my best student,” she said after seeing it.

“Ah, you say that to all the girls,” I laughed, as I was the only man in the class.

“No.”

For the final day I was originally thinking of doing a painting of Sophia Loren but that felt a little inauthentic and instead asked one of my fellow students, Georgia, to pose for a photo inspired by a shot of Loren. I took the picture out on the back patio of the venue and added in a gorgeous sky from a few nights prior.

I’m not happy with this piece at all, feeling like I just fell apart as an artist. Olga saw how in the dumps I was and told me I’m too hard on myself. Which, like, yeah duh. I’m making a whole set of paintings called The Emotion Series about just that subject. The class were supportive as well but I ended up separating myself to process everything my head was doing to me. Have you ever met my greatest nemesis? It me.

However, on my way out of the studio I stopped in the door, turned around and said to everyone, “Working alongside all of you for the past week has been one of the greatest experiences of my life. Thank you.”

But I’m considering all of these to just be extended sketches and over the coming weeks I’m planning to redo each of these in my home studio, learning from each and doing work that I’m proud of and that Olga can be proud of.

And I DID learn a lot. I had a lot of “AHA!” moments the last day as I was working on that ill-fated piece that I’ll utilize in the future. In all honesty, if I’d only done work I liked during this period I think that would be a bigger sign that I didn’t make the most of this opportunity. My entire process as an artist is based on the concept of learning from everything that goes right, what goes wrong, and why for each. As long as I’m learning, I’m growing and moving forward.

For instance, here’s that last one done again back in the studio:

Rob’s Art on ShopAEW###Rob and Jason Arnett's novella Rudow Can't Fail!###Prints, Signed Prints and Original Paintings at ShopAEW!###InstagramThreadsYouTube

The converted farmhouse we were working in has been in the Medici family since the 1300’s, is in the midst of an active vineyard, part of an active winery and surrounded by the hills Leonardo DaVinci often painted into his pieces, possibly including the Mona Lisa. COME ON NOW.

But finally, I want to talk about this group of people I was fortunate to spend the week with. Women from the US, throughout Europe, and China joined me in this learning experience and I learned even more just working beside them for this time. Numerous times we all remarked how odd it was that we were all meeting for the first time because it seemed like we’d known one another our whole lives.

Of note, please go check out Ruby Silvious (@ruby_silvious), Laura Lin (@lauralinstudio) and Yuting Wang (@yutingwangpainting) on Instagram. I was awed to be in their presence and I swear Yuting is going to become a household name in the next few years.

And without a doubt the most incredible part of this whole experience was Thursday night when Katy and I were the last ones up with another couple, Maja and Leszek from Poland sitting around a fire pit.

Somehow the topic of how I proposed to Katy came up earlier in the evening. As the night progressed, it was around midnight, Leszek was so emotional that he dropped to a knee in front of Maja AND PROPOSED TO HER. He had planned to do it a few days later in Florence but he was so moved and felt the moment was perfect. Katy ran back to our apartment and got a bottle of Prosecco so that we could celebrate together.

None of this feels real yet. Like, if you were to write a story about the week it would feel too perfect.

Love you more,Rob

(She said yes, by the way.)