Once we have applied the Skin and Armature modifiers, we are left with an almost ready-to-use base mesh; what we need to do now is clean the possibly overlapping faces and whatever other mistakes were made by the Skin modifier.
Be careful not to be confused by the previous recipe, which was meant only as a possible example; we didn't actually use the Skin modifier's Armature to change the pose of the base mesh.
Let's prepare the mesh and the view:
Go to the Object Modifiers window under the main Properties panel and then to the Mirror modifier subpanel and click on the little X icon to the right in order to delete the modifier; you are left with half of the mesh (actually the half that is really generated by the Skin modifier; the other side was simulated by the Mirror modifier):
Deleting the Mirror modifier
Press Tab to go into Edit Mode, 7 on the numpad to go into Top view, and Z to go into the Wireframe viewport shading mode.