The realm of the artist-designer and individual printer is the major emphasis of this book, but we have made some effort to juxtapose it with the tremendously large and important screen-process industry that is such a lively part of the field of commercial graphic communication. Furthermore, we have endeavored to produce a book that would be useful to the amateur as well as the professional, to the very young artist and his teacher, and to the experienced producer. Screen-process printing is both simple and extremely complicated. This book discusses the process as it might be used in an elementary-school environment with students as young as eight or nine working with available and inexpensive materials. It also includes ideas that should interest the advanced textile designer and serigrapher.
This is a technical book. Technical books (or as they are sometimes called in a derogatory manner, how-to-do-it books) are always difficult to produce because of the overriding interest most beginners and many advanced artists have in new techniques. Many creative people lose their creativity in the vast wonderland of methodology. One would not wish (at least not for any amount of time) to listen to musical scales played by the New York Philharmonic under the direction of Leonard Bernstein. But just as painful would be the rendition of a Brahms concerto by a third-rate orchestra. So while this is a book about techniques and skills, the authors have attempted to continually remind the reader that skills are not the end goal—they are only a helpful preliminary. They are necessary to produce meaningful results but they are no guarantee of quality production. And the goal of all should be quality production.