One of the most beautiful parts of the Captain Scarlet and The Mysterons television show were the lush paintings which set off the end titles. These were done by Ron Embleton, who was at the time also supplying the artwork for the Stingray comic strip. Embleton went on to also do some Captain Scarlet comics.
Embleton apparently preferred to work on expansive historical pieces like Wulf the Briton. Here's a link to an outstanding gallery of his work.
Eventually Embleton became the artist for Penthouse magazine on the exceedingly well crafted but exceedingly raunchy Oh,Wicked Wanda!. That's where I first discovered his name, and knew nothing of his connection to my boyhood favorite show Captain Scarlet.
Here are those lovely and exciting pieces of artwork which graced the end of every Captain Scarlet episode. All are by Embleton.
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Great to see all these fabulous paintings - many thanks for sharing them. In terms of technique they were worked up using colored inks with gouache added to bring out the highlights such as the bubbles and modelling on Scarlet's costume as well as the light areas on the shark's heads which you can see in the final painting.
ReplyDeleteEmbleton didn't as far as I know work on Thunderbirds (although he was offered the strip) but he did a spectacular job on the comic strip adaptations of Stingray. He was also responsible for designing the distinctive Stingray lettering as it appeared on the TV series.
It might've been Stingray. I got hold of that bit of info from the commentary track by Gerry Anderson for the first episode of Scarlet and I might've remembered it wrong.
ReplyDeleteThanks for all the info.
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It was Frank Bellamy who drew Thunderbirds. Ron Embleton drew Stingray and Captain Scarlet. (Later, Mike Noble took over the CS strip. All were published in TV Century 21.
ReplyDeleteI actually have some Thunderbirds comics by Bellamy around here. I'll have to make the corrections in my original post.
ReplyDeleteThanks guys.
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Also, at the time Ron Embleton was drawing Captain Scarlet, another artist was drawing Stingray. I know his brother Gerry took over from Ron on the Stingray strip after he left it, but can't remember if this was still the situation in 1968.
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