EXTRACTS: The Art of Ron Embleton (illustrators special) © 2018 The Book Palace (144 PAGES in Full edition)

12 endured many highs and lows and the immediate post- war years were proving to be particularly difficult as he failed to obtain any kind of teaching work at London’s most prestigious colleges. His commitment to his students matched that of the commitment to his craft and Ron and he formed an immediate bond, the young artist recognising in the older man a truly great talent as well as a great instructor and Bomberg recognising in Ron a great artist in the making. If anyone could have made a claim to have been a hugely influential force in the development of Ron Embleton’s art, it was Bomberg. The fact that Bomberg had fallen so far out of favour with the art establishment that he was living in a state of abject poverty would have also made Ron acutely aware of the transitory and fickle nature of the art industry. When Ron reached the age of sixteen—an age when many boys for much of the last century, ceased their studies and took their first tentative steps into the world of work, his father took him to a London studio where Ron found himself undertaking a variety of tasks under the watchful eye of Henry Bream, who was studio manager as well as the father of Julian Bream, the famed classical guitarist. There was one occasion where the elder Bream brought in his teenaged son en-route to a meeting with the great Segovia. It was inevitable that Ron’s innately independent spirit should want to break free from the confines of a studio where he was an anonymous cog working on briefs that, inevitably, made little demands on his particular strengths and were, in the longer term, leading him nowhere beyond a regular and modest pay cheque. It was the sale of his first strip at the age of 17 and his conviction that he could trade on his own talents that encouraged him to set up a studio with his school friend Terence Patrick and James Bleach, an artist who Terence had encountered at a local life drawing class. ABOVE AND RIGHT: Examples of Ron's earliest work, which was primarily in the field of comics. Scion was one of a number of small time publishers that cashed in on the post-war craze for US styled and themed comic books and Ron with his drawing skills and love of his subject matter was the perfect choice of illustrator for many of these comics. It's worth mentioning that Ron would script and letter these stories as well as draw them.