Leonid Afremov Leonid Afremov is a Russian-Israeli and was born July 12, 1955 in Vitebsk, Belarus. Afremov has loved art his whole life and graduated from Vitebsk Art School in 1978. Afremov has experimented with different art techniques early in his career, but found painting to be the best way to express himself. He has created his own unique style that he expresses mainly with a palette knife and oils. His art is modern impressionistic, and he is well known mostly for being one of the most colorful artists out there. Leonid paints a lot of scenes from nature, and all of his art is very non-controversial and meant to evoke emotions, not political debates. When referring to his art Leonid Afremov stated, “I love to express the beauty, harmony, and spirit of this world in my paintings.� From Leonid Afremov’s artwork the elements that affected me the most were certainly color, composition or balance, and also texture. The colors in all of his artwork are all so vibrant and exciting, but still evoke calm feelings. While the texture in his artwork varies from blended to very layered and choppy depending
on the scene. I captured this element in my bust form designs by making one piece very layered and textured like some of his paintings and the other bust form very blended and smooth like the skies and backgrounds in his other paintings. I chose vibrant colors for both forms to express this element clearly in my designs, but I chose different color families for both that I thought went along with each retailer’s image better.
Two Retailers Anthropologie My first retailer I chose was Anthropologie. I chose this because a lot of the scenes that Leonid Afremov paints are of beautiful trees and nature landscapes, and the creative feel of it reminded me of Anthropologie. Anthropologies stores often have wood themes on the inside and have elements of nature throughout, combined with colorful, homey, and creative merchandise and displays to create their overall image. I thought Afremov would be a good fit for Anthropologie because the colors, overall feel evoked from each and most other elements seemed to line up, so pairing these two seemed more natural for me. I could also see some Anthropologie customers wanting to buy Afremov’s artwork which I thought was a good sign these two would be good to inspire one another.
Artzia My second retailer I chose was Artzia. I chose this store because while it’s look is very different from Anthropologie, I feel there are many creative design elements throughout the store and especially in their window displays. When I looked at Leonid Afremov’s artwork I didn’t automatically think of Artzia, but I wanted to pick a retailer that had a different overall image, so I knew that picking one with a similar “look” to Afremov’s work wasn’t an option. However, I felt that I could use Afremov’s elements of color, texture, and composition balance to create a more modern piece that would suit Artzia, but also look like it was inspired by Leonid Afremov. I felt that If I could combine my inspiration elements with a more modernized streamlined bust form design it would create something that would certainly stand out to their target market, but not turn them away. I wanted to make something to both complement the merchandise and do justice to the artist’s artwork. Something creative yet simple so that Artzia’s target market would find it appealing.
Bust Form Designs
For my bust form design for Anthropologie I wanted to incorporate some nature element into it. There was one Leonid Afremov painting that I found particularly inspiring that painted out a fall tree scene along a path and incorporated beautiful warm fall colors. I thought this was perfect for Anthropologie because they often have nature inspired designs in their windows and throughout their stores, so a tree inspired bust would fit right in. My bust would be made of wire and then I would use brown aluminum crafting wire to shape the form of the tree base, roots and the branches onto the bust. From there I would fill in the tree color with the brown paper bag style sheets of paper between the wire. For the tree leaves I would first cut out the plastic sheet pictured above in the general shape of the top of the tree and attach that to the bust. To create the leaves I would cut the translucent vellum colored papers pictured above in random shapes and glue them onto the plastic to create texture. I incorporated a lot of color throughout the top and the neck of the bust by designing that to be the leaves of the tree. The intricate roots along with the tree branch design and leaves on top create for a balanced composition overall.
My bust design for Artzia I knew I wanted to make much more simple and needed it to have a more modern look to it. I was inspired by the skies of the landscapes for this bust form design. I used cooler vibrant colors for this design to incorporate color because I felt like cool colors seem cleaner to me, but it still kept the element of color inspired from Leonid Afremov’s paintings. To create my bust design I would want a white plastic bust to keep it clean and simple, similar to the one pictured above. For the base I would want it to be a simple black base, but with curly legs that go along with the look of the logo font to add a more creative look to the bust itself. For the design I want to paint the black outlines on the bust in a balanced funky composition like pictured above. Inside of the black outline the colored parts would be painted with chips like the ones pictured above. I wanted to blend the colors together to replicate the blended sky look and create a smooth texture. I feel like the smoother blended look contrasted with the sleek modern bust and stand makes the bust design more balanced along with the balanced composition of the design shape itself.
Works Cited Afremov, Lenoid. “Profile” RedBubble. Redbubble Pty Ltd. September 2010. Web. 26. October. 2014. http://www.redbubble.com/people/afremov
Afremov, Lenoid. “Lenoid Afremov Bio” Afremov. Afremov.com 2013. 26. October. 2014. http://afremov.com/pages.php?pageid=2