Halftones-Great Read by Joe Clarke

[GKitson]

http://printwearmag.com/article/screen-printing/how-to-print-halftones

Read this and then read it again, then have everybody who works with you read it, then read it again.

~Kitson

[bimmridder]

Just read it. Sent it to my art department. Printed it out for my production people to read. Then we can all discuss.

[alan802]

If we all read everything we could get our hands on from Joe we'd all be way better off.  We'd be very confused for a while until we started to understand everything but that's the way it goes.  Beginners and those who haven't got a grasp of the terminology and some advanced principles of screen printing won't be able to understand most of what Joe says, I know it was that way for me in the beginning.  I'd have to read things 10 times before I got it. 

[tonypep]

If you ask Joe what time it is he will begin by explaining the dynamic forces behind the Swiss watch, which in turn will segway into a discussion of Geneva drives (which btw are found on what presses?)
But he is one of the most engaging people in the industry.

[ericheartsu]

If you ask Joe what time it is he will begin by explaining the dynamic forces behind the Swiss watch, which in turn will segway into a discussion of Geneva drives (which btw are found on what presses?)
But he is one of the most engaging people in the industry.

We have a Geneva Drive on our M&M xpress! that's neither here nor their...but just in case no one answers.

[ScreenPrinter123]

If we all read everything we could get our hands on from Joe we'd all be way better off.  We'd be very confused for a while until we started to understand everything but that's the way it goes. 

It's like reading GK Chesterton for me ... over and over and over and over... can't get enough:

“Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about.”
― G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy


“Take the case of courage. No quality has ever so much addled the brains and tangled the definitions of merely rational sages. Courage is almost a contradiction in terms. It means a strong desire to live taking the form of a readiness to die. 'He that will lose his life, the same shall save it,' is not a piece of mysticism for saints and heroes. It is a piece of everyday advice for sailors or mountaineers. It might be printed in an Alpine guide or a drill book. This paradox is the whole principle of courage; even of quite earthly or brutal courage. A man cut off by the sea may save his life if we will risk it on the precipice.

He can only get away from death by continually stepping within an inch of it. A soldier surrounded by enemies, if he is to cut his way out, needs to combine a strong desire for living with a strange carelessness about dying. He must not merely cling to life, for then he will be a coward, and will not escape. He must not merely wait for death, for then he will be a suicide, and will not escape. He must seek his life in a spirit of furious indifference to it; he must desire life like water and yet drink death like wine. No philosopher, I fancy, has ever expressed this romantic riddle with adequate lucidity, and I certainly have not done so. But Christianity has done more: it has marked the limits of it in the awful graves of the suicide and the hero, showing the distance between him who dies for the sake of living and him who dies for the sake of dying.”
― G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy

[alan802]

If we all read everything we could get our hands on from Joe we'd all be way better off.  We'd be very confused for a while until we started to understand everything but that's the way it goes. 

It's like reading GK Chesterton for me ... over and over and over and over... can't get enough:

“Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about.”
― G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy


“Take the case of courage. No quality has ever so much addled the brains and tangled the definitions of merely rational sages. Courage is almost a contradiction in terms. It means a strong desire to live taking the form of a readiness to die. 'He that will lose his life, the same shall save it,' is not a piece of mysticism for saints and heroes. It is a piece of everyday advice for sailors or mountaineers. It might be printed in an Alpine guide or a drill book. This paradox is the whole principle of courage; even of quite earthly or brutal courage. A man cut off by the sea may save his life if we will risk it on the precipice.

He can only get away from death by continually stepping within an inch of it. A soldier surrounded by enemies, if he is to cut his way out, needs to combine a strong desire for living with a strange carelessness about dying. He must not merely cling to life, for then he will be a coward, and will not escape. He must not merely wait for death, for then he will be a suicide, and will not escape. He must seek his life in a spirit of furious indifference to it; he must desire life like water and yet drink death like wine. No philosopher, I fancy, has ever expressed this romantic riddle with adequate lucidity, and I certainly have not done so. But Christianity has done more: it has marked the limits of it in the awful graves of the suicide and the hero, showing the distance between him who dies for the sake of living and him who dies for the sake of dying.”
― G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy

Huh?                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              

[3Deep]

Yep it takes a read or two to understand, but for me I kind of like a straight line it gets you there faster than a curved one, but a good read from Joe, might have to read it again!

Darryl

[cvreeland]

Joe likes his techno-jargon, but by god, he knows his stuff, and is actually a very nice guy. Control Without Confusion was my bible when I began to really knuckle down & learn process printing. I may disagree with him on a few points, but that's because we've maybe taken slightly different roads to reach the same endpoint -- an excellent print. I really love duotones because you can use the ink color of the mid-tone screen to hold the highlight dots & control the apparent dot gain. I will almost never take someone's greyscale photograph & print it as a straight black halftone just because I know that for one more film + screen, I can kick it up from acceptable to "how did you make it look so good??"

Here's a detail shot of a 3 color print on black - discharge underbase burned on a 230/40, white highlight & cool grey 7c burned on 305/34. All 55 line, 158º The grey is printing on & off the underbase, to add a couple more subtleties to the shading.



Link to larger size

[starchild]

Joe's readings give you a microscopic look into exactly what's going on in the print process. If all his teachings are fully digested we begin to construct the print more deliberately. My take is it gives you the understanding of why things go wrong..