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Drawing From Life
with Saide Dai

‘Without language, there is no expression’

🗓️ August 29th to September 5th 2026

🎨 Drawing

Full Board Accommodation: 1,650€ to 2890€ for 7 nights based on room choice & single or shared occupancy.

Tutor's Fee: 650€

Partners & family may join the trip as non-participating guests without the teaching fee.

Saide's Website

Still Life Documentary

Accommodation

Course Description

An intensive course with the aid of a model, for those who are keen to learn and are seeking to establish a firm and intelligent foundation for a lifetime of creative practice. The subject is presented so that real benefit will be available to the least experienced, whilst also extending the most gifted.

Introduction

Trying to make sense of the bewildering and contradictory world of Art, which is really a reflection of the world at large and to find a firm place in a sea of opinion, is no mean task.

The program is designed to foster intelligent self-critical awareness and objectivity, by the understanding of fundamental principles, rather than through the cultivation of opinions, styles and mannerisms.

We will explore the common links between our experiences and ideas, coupled with the difficulty of expressing them.

Drawing is seen to be the ability to make visual relationships in all its aspects, the ramifications of which are common to all disciplines and not just an activity reserved for the life-room. It reveals the way an artist thinks.

It will be presented as a means to achieve high standards in visual comprehension, judgment and expression.

The procedures of critical visual thinking will bring you into contact with many concepts, which have wide application in virtually all aspects of Art and Design. Group revisions and criticisms will provide a platform to share and discuss practical and philosophical questions that arise in the light of practice.

Ultimately, the course encourages you to apply these principles and attitudes to your parallel studies and integrate them with your own work. It will help in the journey of individuals, to ‘become a light unto themselves’.

The range of topics touched upon include:

The ‘how’s’ of drawing and painting are relatively simple - not so, the ‘why’s’.
Different schools/ approaches/ systems - advantages and limitations; virtues and follies.
Objective versus subjective - analytical and intuitive approaches.
The paradoxical nature of ‘accuracy’.
Real freedom is the outcome of discipline.
Generalisation or particularisation?
Spontaneity - what does it mean?
Beauty in ugliness and ugliness in beauty.
Searching and finding.
Finish and resolution.
Decoration or construction?
Stylism or mannerism?
Authenticity and fakery.
Interpretation.
Inspiration.
Finding one’s voice.

Brief Outline

DAY 1. (With model)

The visual language and vocabulary.

Drawing is approached as a means of learning ‘to see’ as opposed to ‘recognise’. Priority is given to making accurate and true visual judgments, rather than uncritical picture-making. The process of observed analytical drawing is analogous to the procedures of all other aspects of drawing, whether the subject-matter is based on internal or external sources. The object is to render ideas, observations and feelings intelligently in graphic form.

General observation.
Position, interval and axes.
Line, plane and shape.
Form.
Space

DAY 2. (With model)

Building on Day 1, also exploring the dynamics of what constitutes the living quality and energy of a piece of work. The nature and significance of speed through faster drawing -the essence of simplification and distillation.

Movement.
Rhythm.
Musicality.
Parallelism and visual rhymes.
Flow and energy.

DAY 3. (With model)

Illumination. Understanding the nature of light and shadow and its effect on form, space and colour.

Tonal drawing - different types.
Full colour-tone.
Form-tone.
Aerial perspective.
Texture gradient.

DAY 4.

FREE BREAK DAY. Optional trip to Florence.

DAY 5.

Composition - The relationship to the 2 dimensional format. The single most important factor in establishing the quality, impact and success of a piece of work. We will explore this theme working outside, in the rich surrounding landscape.

Linear composition.
Tonal composition and its crucial role in colour.
Geometry.

DAY 6.

The Portrait. This is the most complex of all the visual idioms, both structurally and psychologically, and consequently the most fascinating. It is also a microcosm in which to explore almost all the problems within drawing, painting and sculpture.

Particularisation versus generalisation.
Asymmetry.
Characterisation.
Interpretation.
Selection.
Caricature - the elasticity of proportion.

In Memory, oil on linen on panel, 18x12inches.jpg

About Saied Dai

Persian by birth, Saied Dai’s seven years of art training culminated at The Royal Academy of Arts for his postgraduate studies.

He was invited back to the RA Schools to teach under Leonard McComb's Keepership, where drawing was seen to be the cornerstone of all the disciplines. He has also taught at the Prince of Wales Institute of Architecture.

After being elected to the Royal Society of Portrait Painters in 2004, he won the prestigious Ondaatje Prize and gold medal for Portraiture twice, in 2006 and 2022. He was also the recipient of the national William Lock Prize in 2023. He was elected member of The New English Art Club in 2009.

He exhibits widely in London, provinces and abroad with examples in The National Portrait Gallery, Palace of Westminster and other public institutions.

His work focuses on atmospheric and timeless figure compositions, portraits, still lives and landscapes.

Accom Said