Artist Influence Hans Holbein the Younger

Hans Holbein the Younger was a German artist born 1497 and was a member of a family of artists, he studied his user his father and uncle (Hans Holbein the elder and uncle Sigmund). After gaining the wealth of knowledge from his family he set out to practice independently in Basel, Switzerland. He was a varied artist who worked in portraiture and was renowned for his strong characterisation’s and strong realistic gazes in his paintings. He showed to be the master of his discipline but his skills didn't stop there, he also worked as illustrator designing woodcuts for book illustrations, the most famous of these being a series of 41 illustrations of the Dance of Death, he packed as much content in a good order into a small format to give a clear message to the reader.

Extract from the Dances of Death series
By Hans Holbein the younger
 Wood Cut Print Block, The British Museum 

He eventually came to England where he would eventually be in service to the king (Henry VIII) working on portraits of his wives and one of his most famous paintings, The Ambassadors. But his skills reached out so much further than just portrait painting. He was a skilled designer and draftsmen   who designed everything from buttons and belt buckles to patent weapons and horse out fittings. He was renowned for being one of the greatest portraits, draftsmen and designers of the time but his life was cut short. He died in a London plague epidemic in 1543 but his legacy lives on in his paintings and other designs to this day.

The Ambassadors By Hans Holbein the younger in 1533
Oil painting, The National Gallery, London

So how did he influence his discipline? This is a difficult questions to answer as there have been many great portrait painters long before him working with the same wet on wet painting techniques, but I can say that he was a master of these techniques that can be clearly seen in his work, also his work changed with the rapid movement of the religion that came across in 16th century England (the move from Catholic to Protestant). He was clearly brilliant of describing the sitters personality in his painters, by including objects (symbols) placed strategically around the sitter, a perfect example of this is the ambassadors, he had objects that showed off the wealth and knowledge that they had, but he took it one step further with minute details, like the broken string on the instrument or the hidden image of Christ in the top left, which could be interpreted as the viewers hidden religion or turning there backs to religion. Over all you could argue that he influenced the way we use visual communication in our artwork today.

Escapism gone to far David Ward 2014
Pencil and Digital Painting (Photoshop) 

It was this idea and use of symbolic objects that helped me build up my own character for a project, I was trying to show the viewer a modern day gamer that lives in computer games as opposed to the real world. I did this by including a dog with its lead in its mouth to show the dog being neglected, the mechanical arms weren't just there for comedy, they where there to represent the fact that he never wants to be taken away from the moment and the junk food was there symbolise a unhealthy life style or It could even be seen as a "memento mori"just like the skull in the painting of the ambassadors. To my surprise the process that I used to pain the piece wasn't that far different from his Hans's as well. I to started with line art before building it up with colour until I gained a polished look.