This fantastic one-day intensive workshop will allow you to turn your own designs into vibrant and expressive decorated ceramic ware.

Designed for people working with clay, this workshop will demonstrate how to put your designs in repeat on ceramic surfaces.

Bring along your own small pieces to decorate in white clay with a smooth surface.

During this one-day workshop students will cover:

Drawing for printmaking, formatting your images for print
The basics of silk screen printing, including preparing a film positive, coating and exposing a silk screen, using low cost accessible equipment
Working with off the shelf underglaze as a printing paste.
Working with underglaze to hand colour your prints
The workshop will explore direct printing process as well as tissue transfer process

Suitable for beginners, intermediate and experienced artists.

Please arrive at 8:45am ready for a 9am start. Morning and afternoon tea supplied along with colourants for your clay and slip for decorating. Participants are asked to bring along some bisque or greenware pots and test tiles. Full details will be provided to participants before the workshop. Lunch, firing and clay are not included (clay is available to purchase at the studio if needed).

About your Workshop Facilitator

Simon Suckling is a mid-career artist and designer based in Meanjin Brisbane.

Simon is studied Visual Arts at University of Southern Queensland and an MA from Monash University in Melbourne. He has been a practicing ceramic artist for 35 years.

Simon has studied porcelain and studio pottery in Japan and China and currently produces handmade works under the name of Bluehouse Porcelain.

Simon’s ceramic practice incorporates botanical illustration and printmaking, with each drawing rendered in multiple layers of silk-screened vitreous enamel transferred to porcelain surfaces.

His work is held in collection of the State Library of Queensland and the Museum of Brisbane

Artist statement

I make intimate portraits of the natural world surrounding my inner-city home in Bardon. It is a place where the natural world collides with the concrete and asphalt of the encroaching city. A place where animals and plants constantly adapt to their changing environment. These are stories of loss and destruction, resilience and hope. My practice is grounded in drawing, a language that allows me to traverse material constraints and communicate across disciplines.

I make small ceramic works as a gentle reminder that nature is not something that occurs elsewhere, it is here on our doorstep to nurture and cherish.