Ceramic printing workshop/courses?

artsycraftsy

Does anyone know where I can learn printing on ceramic techniques? Are there any courses or anywhere at all I can learn the basics and the materials needed to be able to print on ceramics? Any info at all much appreciated!

davemc6832

I don't know any specific courses. Im playing around with techniques myself. There is a ton of different ways of doing it depending on what look you're going for.

If it's photographs you're interested in printing you can maybe try decals. Get yourself an old laser printer and some waterslide decal paper. When you print an image and apply it to your ceramics, the iron oxide in the toner will be left and form a sepia coloured print.

If you want full colour photographic images its probably cheapest to use somebody like digital ceramic uk. Just do up an a3 sheet in photoshop, email it to them and they'll print it for ye.

One of the main issues with this type of printing is firing ranges and glazes. Alot of experimentation has to be done, so do lots of test tiles first. Certain transparent glazes will just neutralize iron oxide in the decals and your image will dissapear. Also high firings 1280c or so can alter colours in your images and give unexpected results.

You can also try more traditional transfer techniques. Using rubber stamps, or tiles, linocuts, or basically anything that wll give a design or pattern. Paint coloured slips onto these and print onto leather hard clay.

You can get oxide pencils and draw directly onto the clay or paint ( just like a painting ) with coloured slips onto leather hard clay. Scarva Pottery Supplies up the north are good suppliers.

You can make a lovely ink for printing also using a 50/50 mix of black mason stain and gertsley borate ( a flux). Erin Furimsky does a lot of interesting printing with this ink and also with coloured slips. Google her for transfer printing and printing on clay. ceramicsartsdaily.org and pottermakingillustrated are amazing resources for any clay techniques.

Ye can send me a message if ye need any more details, most of the techniques are quite straight forward, ye just need to play around with them for a while

artsycraftsy

Thank you do much for the detailed reply, I wasn't expecting much help because I cant even find much from google! That's exactly where things get confusing, during the firing and knowing what temperatures to go to etc. I bought the waterslide decal paper (only one place in Irl seem to sell it or maybe I'm wrong?) and printed out images from inkjet printer onto it but I was sure you couldn't fire the decals on after! I was just testing with adding the images to flat tiles and literally applying a matt varnish on top of decal! I know it needs to be fired on but I thought the ink on the decal wouldn't be suitable. I couldnt find info anywhere on firing the decals on, even on the decal information leaflet, which I found strange so I assumed they were not for firing. I assumed the normal ink from a normal inkjet printer would just fire away in a kiln? I would love it if it's possible to simply add the decal to sculptural work and fire it on so it retains the similar colours.
Erin Furimsky's work is amazing, yea will look at those sites you mentioned. I guess its a lot of trial an error to get the results I'm looking for, thanks again for the info!

davemc6832

No you don't use an inkjet printer. You use a laser printer. Most black toner cartridges in a laser printer contain some amount of iron oxide. Some contain more than 60% iron oxide. Especially the ones uses for printing cheques. When you print on a decal sheet from a laser printer, apply it to your sculpture and fire it, everything will burn away except the iron oxide leaving you an image. Because it's only iron oxide it will give you a dark reddy brown / sepia version of your image.

Buy some blank tiles from a hardware, make some of your own, and add the decals to as many different combinations as possible. Put the decals on top of glazed ones, non glazed, try different combos of glazes if possible. Different glazes will react differently to the iron oxide in the decals and give different results.

Scarva Pottery Supplies up north are the best in the country. Let me know how ye get on or if ye have any other questions Ill try my best to help.

artsycraftsy

Thanks a mill, ok so ill have to start again and buy decal paper suitable for a laser printer..and of course an actual laser printer! Lookin forward to doing some tests and seeing what I come up with, I'll let you know! I'm thinking sepia type images would look cool on my work. Thanks so much for the help