Topless Tuesday: Stephanie Seymour, 1991

Stephanie has already been featured on this blog as a wall-mounted bust, so she’s established herself as an artist’s muse.

I recently happened across the website of an artist by the name of Paco Leal, who is occasionally inspired by our SI girls. He chose this worthy shot of Stephanie:

… to create this piece, which, sadly, has already been sold.

Fortunately, if you have $6,000 lying around, you can still pick up this painting of the greatest photograph ever taken.

Anyway, he’s described as working in oil on canvas, but these are a little too perfect as reproductions, so I suspect there’s some tracing and/or computering involved in his methods.


Here’s another photorealistic reproduction of a Stephanie pic (possibly the most glorious photo ever taken of her) by a pinup artist named Gennadiy Koufay.

It’s pretty insane that such an exquisite woman never got an SI cover.

Play Freeboob!

According to legend, the ancient mythical Amazons had one breast removed to allow them to become better archers.

I can only assume that was the inspiration behind these numbers sported by Kate Bock and Barbara Palvin.

These rather impractical one-piecers each cover only the right breast, leaving the left to be covered modestly by the palm of a hand.

They’re not good for beach volleyball, I guess is what I’m saying.

They’re not the first single-breast suits the swimsuit issue has shown us. Just last year, Hailey Clauson shared this number with us.

Now it’s the right breast that is free while the left one is hidden from view.

A couple years earlier, in 2015, Sara Sampaio and Sam Hoopes flaunted a couple of breasts: one left and one right.

Ten years earlier, in 2005, Anne V and Carolyn Murphy flaunted the same breast in possibly the same swimsuit.

And let us travel all the way back to 1990, when the lovely Elle Macpherson showed us what was right. (Marisa Miller followed suit in 2004.)

I have a feeling there are other examples that I wasn’t able to dig up. If I find more, I’ll update this post. But the current tally is 6 right breasts exposed, 3 left breasts exposed. (Or, if you're a pessimist, 3 right and 6 left concealed.)

But obviously, in order to be actual swimsuits, some additional cover would have to be added.

One that note, another theme of 2018 seems to be “mesh one-piece swimsuits so scandalous that they need to be worn with bikini bottoms underneath.”

See? Swimsuitologist is really just a fashion blog at heart.

• • •

You know what? Over a year later, I'm going to take the suggestion left in the comments by an anonymous tipster and include Kim Alexis here. Even though her back is to us, I think we can speculate that she's revealing her left and concealing her right. This is the suit referred to in the magazine, mysteriously, as "one-piece topless," and maybe that's what they meant.

Welcome, Kim!

Hannah Lisa, Hannah Lisa Men Have Named You

For some reason, Hannah Ferguson has inspired more caricatures than most models I've found. Here's a sampling.

(I'll move roughly from the worst to the best.)

We'll start with these:

They are stills from a piece of 3D animation.
While the technology is impressive, I don't think it looks like Hannah specifically. If it hadn't been labeled as such, I wouldn't have guessed.

This is also the first of three caricatures that portray her in her Cheryl Tiegs bodypaint.

Here's another:

Clearly, some artistic talent is involved, as well as some vaguely humorous commentary on breasts. But the face is just irresponsibly frightening... How do you get there from here?

This one is a competent drawing...

...but not one I'd ever recognize as Hannah.

Same with this one:

Well drawn, but not a great likeness.

This one is maybe a little closer, but still a miss.

I think it's difficult to caricature beautiful women. It's an art form that thrives on ugliness, so it's tough to distort and parody a human face while still portraying it as attractive. Hence, all the squishing of Hannah's gorgeous face.

This one is a pretty beautiful drawing:

Not instantly recognizable, but definitely better at capturing subtleties. Here's the original that the artist worked from:

This one is nice.

I like the smudgy, impressionistic style of it. It also helps that I love the dress she's wearing for inspiration.

This one is gorgeous, with some amazing lighting effects.

And finally this one, one last fishnet drawing (complete with fish):

I think this one captures her wide, elfin eyes without resorting to shaping her entire skull like a t-square (like some of the above ones). It also captures her thin, narrow nose while maintaining its cuteness.

I can't think of a better muse than Hannah. I hope a whole new batch of inspiration arrives in February.

Beautiful Bust

Did you know about this?

Apparently Stephanie Seymour's on-again-off-again lover/husband/whatever Peter Brant commissioned a figurehead-style bust of her.

There are apparently multiple copies of it. I'm not sure if these are three different statues, or if you can style her hair like a Barbie.

In any case, seems like a good excuse to look at a few photos of Stephanie.

By the way, I feel a little iffy about posting these last two, since they're probably candid paparazzi photos. But they are, I believe, pretty recent.

Damn, she looks fantastic.

Let’s Call It a Draw

For the second time, Swim Daily has featured the drawings of comic book artist and swimsuit model aficionado Howard Shum.

(Here’s the first installment.)

They’re nice drawings—cool style, clean lines—but for the most part they don’t look particularly like the models. They’re just kind of generic hot girls.

For example, without cheating, can you tell who these SI models are?*

Maybe that’s not the point of these—maybe they’re not supposed to be actual caricatures. But there are some good SI model caricatures out there that I’ve stumbled across from time to time.

This is a great Brooklyn Decker drawing by a Mexico-based artist who goes by “VADELATE” on DeviantArt:

Pixar story artist Bobby Rubio seems particularly obsessed with Kate Upton. Here she is in her Sobe staring contest ad:

…and doing the harlem shake with Michelle Jenneke:

…and, for some reason, the cat daddy with Yo Gabba Gabba! characters:

There used to be a drawing message board called The Drawing Board where artists would periodically give themselves assignments of drawing beautiful women. I believe that is where I first saw this Jessica Gomes by Michael Birkhofer:

And this is a lovely Irina Shayk by Serge Birault, who apparently didn’t even know who she was and just selected the model for his “sexy woman” needs:

• • •

Tangentially related is the curious case of Greg Land, a comic book artist who has come under no small amount of ridicule for the amount of tracing and ripping-off he seems to do. Of interest to this blog are this picture of Black Canary, clearly swiped from this exquisite 1996 Valeria Mazza photo:

…and this Sojourn cover, clearly a “flip horizontal” tracing of Yamila Diaz’s 2002 cover:

*In order, Bar Refaeli, Brooklyn Decker, Jessica Hart, Marisa Miller.