Flesh Tone Insecurities? Consult Holbein

Holbein, The Younger, is the guy to go for for skin tones.  Subtle Elegance.

After Holbein' The Stone Thrower, (minus the coffee spot).  Today, this pose could be translated
into a hefty gal bowling a gutter ball.

Erin could benefit

Flesh tones drive me up the wall.  I see nothing simple about them.  There's a number of tints involved  and I'd prefer not to see them as complex as I do and use no more than three. ( It's when I get to the flesh, I adore contemporary portrait painter Alex Katz--one or two colors, that's it).

This morning I sat down to sun with Holbein. Schmid had said no one did skin tones like Holbein (the younger).  And that's true.  I counted three basic shades with two to three variations (one towards pink, the other towards ochre) as he moved from dark to light  in a hand detail.  I see a few more in this marvelous portrait. Obviously, simple isn't going to work on Erin. 

With a few moments left in the session,  I attempted a copy of his drawing of The Stone Thrower. It made me chuckle--and wondered if he and the rest of his male artist friends had ever seen a  female naked.  This gal is a guy with tits!  Michelangelo's women were Amazonian as well--probably had to do with orientations and begetting* being done undercover?




*Begetting.  A better word than....and in my mind since Sunday when I watched Inherit The Wind with Spence Tracy and Fredrick March.  --Who did you say?  Two very outstanding actors from the olden days.