Porcelain: Line, Form and Surface

Designed for intermediate to advanced ceramicists, this intensive weekend workshop focuses on the creative potential of combining wheel formed porcelain with drawing. Ideal for students with a solid foundational understanding of throwing techniques, this course is designed to push your skills to the next level. Through demonstrations and guided studio practice, students will develop techniques for creating refined porcelain forms and richly detailed surfaces.

Drawing is immediate and expressive, while ceramics is slow and enduring. When combined, they create a unique dialogue between gesture and material. Both disciplines are closely connected to the hand, preserving subtle marks that bring a sense of presence to the finished work.

Using porcelain's luminous white surface and ability to capture fine detail, you will create wheel-thrown forms and learn techniques for etching, inlaying and carving drawings into leather-hard clay. The workshop covers form development, surface preparation and approaches to integrating decoration with three-dimensional forms. Students will also be given the opportunity to experiment with the application of various resist materials and the use of vitrifying coloured slips to create a rich, layered surface without the need for glaze.

Day one focuses on wheelthrowing and refining your forms. Learn how to work confidently with porcelain while considering shape, proportion and technique. Day two focuses on surface development. Personalise your surface with drawing, carving and painting coloured slips. Midfire porcelain clay and all materials for drawing and painting are included. Objects completed during the workshop will be finished with a single firing to midfire temperature.

This course is ideal for ceramic artists looking to expand their approach to porcelain, surface decoration and contemporary mark-making.

* Please note, it may take up to four weeks after your course ends for works to be available for collection. We will notify you when they are ready for pick up.

* What to bring? Please refer to the list of required materials in the Art Materials field below. 

Students must supply their own art materials, please refer to the list below. 

• Old Towel (ESSENTIAL - for splash protection)
• Protective clothes (old shirt or apron)
• Notebook and pencils/pens
• Any ceramics tools and paint brushes that you may already have
• Any carving tools you have (such as Lino carving tools)
• All clay and other materials are provided
• Enclosed footwear is essential in all studios on campus.

Tania Rollond makes functional and sculptural ceramics, drawings and prints on paper that reflect on her place in the natural world, and the rural environment where she lives.

Rollond holds a Master of Fine Arts (Research) at the University of NSW Art & Design and a Bachelor of Arts (Design) from Curtin University. She studied ceramics at the National Art School, has been a lecturer there since 2004, and has also taught ceramics at University of NSW and Institutes of TAFE. She has been exhibiting regularly since 2001, and her work is held in the collections of the Bendigo Regional Gallery, Shepperton Art Museum, FLICAM Museum in Fuping, China, and many private collections in Australia and internationally.