Hi. My name's Rob Schamberger. I'm that guy who paints rasslers. And other stuff. There's too much in this world that I can't seem to shake.

Study of Carl Milles’ Dancing Maenad Statue

Watercolor on 9” x 12” paper

This is a bronze statue at the St Louis Art Museum that caught my eye as I’ve become fascinated with the colors and patterns that emerge as bronze oxidizes. It’s so dang fun trying to capture those colors. I have some really fabulous green paints that I rarely get to use and it was lovely letting them sing with this piece.

Card subject to change.

Rob’s Art on ShopAEW###Rob and Jason Arnett's novella Rudow Can't Fail!###Rob’s prints and shirts at Pro Wrestling Tees###BlueskyCaraYouTube

This past week on Bluesky I shared 101 pieces of art that I like. I stopped because it became a bit of a distraction from making art myself and now I’m haunted by the hundreds of other artists I didn’t include.

Here’s your EXCLUSIVE early look at The Shockmaster at The Sphere!

My wife Katy’s latest book Oldest Kansas City is now ready for preorder! She’s worked really hard on this, doing deep research in all corners of the city to find as many gems and stories as possible.

Here’s the description:

If you’ve met Katy, you know exactly what her unique energy is all about and how passionate she gets about telling the stories of others. Preorders are really important to a book’s success, so it would mean a lot to us if you could get one for yourself. They start shipping on September 1st. Thanks!

I finished watching Outlander season one and man, while I found it to be of high quality this is a HEAVY show. At first I thought it was going to be a fun sci-fi bodice ripper from the guys behind Deep Space Nine and Battlestar Galactica but it gets real really fast. The gist is that a well-educated woman who worked as a nurse during World War II finds herself thrust back to 1700’s Scotland and is immediately faced with the true horrors that only other human beings can force upon her. The season finale is harsher than the harshest of Game of Thrones and that’s not necessarily a good thing. But it all feels so real and genuine in a way that pop culture rarely allows.

That said, I’ve yet to hear the Queen song from the movie nor have I yet to see an immortal chop off another immortal’s head. Maybe in season two.

Tyler Childers’ new album Snipe Hunter is a surprising delight. It gets serious here and there like you’d expect from him but it also has some unexpected irreverent fun. The standout song for me is Bitin’ List, a story about the people you’d make a point to bite if you ever got rabies:

The other unexpected delight is Tirtha Yatra, about a backwoods West Virginian (maybe autobiographical, maybe not) who wants to go to India to learn more about its peoples and their cultures. It wonderfully goes against so many stereotypes and is just nice to listen to.

And the track Oneida is lovely as all get out:

I finished the audiobook for Dark Sacred Night by Michael Connelly, read by Christine Lakin (yes, the youngest daughter from Step By Step) and Titus Welliver. It’s often a little too convenient and cute in the situations the characters find themselves in, but it’s absolutely never boring. I also like the contrast of Ballard against Bosch and how their generational viewpoints collide. It’s nuanced in a way that I’m impressed by.

Last Sunday I read The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen volume one: The Absolute Edition by Alan Moore and Kevin O’Neill, I think the first time I’ve revisited this since it originally serialized. With how huge and beautiful this series went on to be it’s easy to forget just how perfect it was right out of the gate and I was so delighted to experience it all over again. The Absolute edition also comes with all of Moore’s scripts, which is an absolute treasure to have.

Having enjoyed the new Transformers book quite a bit I wanted to start reading some of the other Energon Universe books. The line started with Void Rivals volume 1 by Robert Kirkman and Lorenzo de Felici, which is a lot of fun. What a surprise it was for the people who just picked up the first issue because it’s the newest Kirkman comic only to be surprised by a gosh dang Transformer on the last page! One of the better marketing maneuvers in recent years. And the payoff of course is that it wasn’t just a stunt, but instead an interstellar Romeo & Juliet & Robots that keeps you engaged in the story.

The other book I picked up was Duke by Josh Williamson, Tom Reilly and Jordie Bellaire, a prologue to GI Joe and spinning out of Transformers. Dealing with the horrors of confronting the Decepticon Starscream, Duke finds himself on the outs with the US military and hunting down a massive conspiracy that he thinks is related to the Transformers but is instead something far more nefarious. Reilly and Bellaire’s art is BREATHTAKING in this, doing something awesome with a minimalistic style that I have nothing but respect for.

I also read Radiant Black volume 4 by Kyle Higgins, Marcelo Costa and friends, which continues to raise the stakes for these new superheroes as the threats of a full alien robot invasion start to become reality. Just a lot of fun and dammit I’m going to embrace some fun whenever it happens.

I thought you’d like to see how the window box planter is coming along! The answer, as you can see, is ‘magnificently.’ Over the years I’ve learned where the shade hits and where it’s pure sun, so the flowers are over in the sunny area, the crotons are in the partial shade and the coleus back in the shade.

I take moments of zen several times a day to just look at their beauty and marvel at their growth. My neighbors are probably a little creeped out by me standing in the window all the time! “I swear, I’m just staring at the plants!”

I’ve read that a lot of the ones I chose this year can be wintered inside (just locked away under grow lamps away from the cats), so I’m going to try that out again. I did it with the crotons and the coleus last year and as you can see that’s worked out really nicely.

Love you more,Rob