I often travel by bicycle around Italy. It’s the perfect means of transportation to stop and take in the moment.
Italy
Category: Galleries
All the artwork contained in the individual galleries. Not all the artwork is assigned to a gallery. To view all images, go to the home page.
2024
Dancers
I love the challenge of representing something dynamic, like dance, in a static medium, like watercolor. I usually work from videos, to capture all sorts of spontaneous and in-between poses (versus staged postures for a photographer). I take screenshots, as I watch videos of dancers in action for the resource materials for these images. After I find a placement on the page that – in my view – creates the right composition/tension, I add color to complement the pose’s vitality.
Chicago
Paintings on this page are divided into two groups: architectural sketches and people.
What I leave on the page or surface is always according to the media I use. If I am working with watercolors, for example, I like to splash color here and there and let the water “do it’s thing.”
The architecture images are mostly painted from photographs. Even if I go out to work on site, I like to have worked out the positioning of the subject beforehand.
The people scenes are from videos I take while I ride my bicycle around town.
Aerialists
I always liked to draw the human body but in 2020, because of Covid restrictions, figure drawing sessions in studios around Chicago were being held remotely, which I found somewhat boring.
So, one day I went looking for contemporary dance videos on YouTube and landed on a recording of an Italian aerialist, Andrea Paoli. From there, I discovered that other aerialists from around the world post their training videos on Instagram and I began sketching and painting them.
I find aerialists (silk, loop and trapeze artists) fascinating. The body is dangling in the air from a prop that requires a lot of physical strength. You are up there, alone – most of the time – exposed, vulnerable and creating figures, stretching your body to feign a grace masking the strength required to perform your moves.
2005
These are two experiments using two 3-D software packages I dabbled with, Poser – for the human figure – and Bryce – for landscape modeling.
The Game (1) (2005). © Gian Luca Ferme 
The Game (2) (2005). © Gian Luca Ferme
2003
This is an icon that haunted me for many years, and it appeared in a few of my works on paper.
Mano Poderosa (2003). © Gian Luca Ferme
2016
A comic book store opened its doors down the street. I brought my son Gian Carlo there because I remembered how important comic books had been in my passion for reading. There I discovered the books of David Mack and created a series of portraits inspired by his watercolor technique.
If two-dimensional art lacks the element of action/time, I found out that it can be represented by the expressionistic effect of brushstrokes on the page.
Bob Marley (2016). © Gian Luca Ferme
1996
In these images, I was intrigued by the action of water, brush, transparency on paper.
Head (“Striped” series, 1996). © Gian Luca Ferme 
Hands (“Striped” series, 1996). © Gian Luca Ferme
2012
My son’s Gian Carlo’s interest in the art of Belgian artist Jean-Michel Folon inspired these images.
Perspectives 2 (2012). © Gian Luca Ferme 
Son and Father (2012). © Gian Luca Ferme 
Perspectives #1 (2012). © Gian Luca Ferme
