Hi. My name's Rob Schamberger. I'm that guy who paints rasslers. And other stuff. And oh, my dreams, it's never quite as it seems.

Study of an 11th Century Statue of the Goddess Chakreshvari

Watercolor on 9” x 12” watercolor paper

I did this study to sort of just loosen up and go wild stylistically. I recently finished a large and complicated piece for an upcoming project and wanted to unwind with this. Fashion over function, style over substance, art for art’s sake.

I like the energy of it.

Card subject to change. I haven’t been told what’s coming out this week yet but probably one of these!

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
Cara
YouTube
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Katy’s book Oldest Kansas City

Friday night was Katy’s big book signing event for Oldest Kansas City. It was awesome to see so many people show up, not just her friends but also a lot of current and past coworkers and of course a lot of people who were just interested in the book! There was a lively talk moderated by her friend Cherryh Cansler and then a Q&A followed by the signing.

Katy’s worked very hard for this and I love seeing it paying off in such a meaningful way.

I went to see Predator: Badlands and thought it was hella fun. The basic plot is that a young Predator goes to a planet where nearly everything is lethal and carnivorous in order to kill the most dangerous creature there as a way of proving himself to his clan. Which is cool enough, but they weave in some Aliens concepts like Weyland-Yutani and synths and it also works as a metaphor for coming of age and forging one’s own identity. But mostly it’s a Predator fighting carnivorous trees with half a synth strapped to his back and that’s rad. See it in 3D if you can, it works great for that format.

Shadows of the Sea by Cathy Malkasian is a fabulous graphic novel about unexpected friendships and living with trauma. It has a lot of elements of a child’s picture book but it’s thematically aimed at an older audience. An anthropomorphic dog who worked as a mine-sniffer is trying to put those horrors in his past and happens upon a lady troll being attacked by a gang of townies trying to rob her. They flee together and slowly develop a friendship while also slowly revealing their inner selves to one another. It’s poignant and moving and full of warmth and hope and I wish I’d never read it just so I could read it again for the first time.

On Thursday I read Ice Cream Man volume 11 by W Maxwell Prince, Martin Morazzo and friends. Has it really been eleven volumes so far in this series? That’s flown by. If you’re unfamiliar, it’s an anthology where each chapter stands alone but they’re all in the same universe. Imagine The Twilight Zone where Rod Serling is a malevolent ice cream man and every episode is connected. There’s a couple stories here that stood out to me, notably one that’s a sort of spy thriller in Cuba and another that explores the nature of horror fiction when the realities of the world seem so much more horrifying.

Nocturnos by Laura Perez is a lush tone poem of a graphic novel that explores the nature of dreams or maybe it’s about looking back at a life from the end. Maybe both? It has a David Lynch Mulholland Drive feeling to it, capturing the sense of how dreams flow from one scene to another without any immediately-apparent reason but that becomes more apparent when you wake from it. I think maybe that’s what was happening? It’s how it resonated with me. Perez’ minimal-yet-meaningful art is absolutely perfect here, adding to the ethereal nature of the experience.

Seeing all of those emails this week, all I could keep thinking about is all of the people no longer in my life because of that guy. As my therapist says, those relationships obviously weren’t going to work out anyway but it’s still sitting there with me. For THAT guy?!?

As a CSA survivor myself, it’s not surprising but still disheartening to see people work to diminish the voices of victims, blame them, and continue to support the perpetrators. It’s a societal issue that’s gone on forever but right now it’s an all-caps SOCIETAL ISSUE.

The cats love when I move my workspace upstairs because it’s the only carpeted area in the house and they get to stretch out in the sun with carpet on their bellies. Our orange boy Tikka still has a lot of his kitten energy but he’s starting to mellow a bit, which is slowly leading to he and his big sister Kima cuddling. As you can see by the picture above, I’m here for it.

It’s funny, Kima didn’t really love getting on the bed with us and wasn’t a lap cat, but Tikka very much is into both. Over the past few weeks she’s all of a sudden started getting on my lap and likes to jump on the bed to wake me up each morning. Again, I’m here for it. Look at that girl, how could I not be?

Love you more,
Rob