The laborious printing process included selecting a black and white photograph transferred to a framed silkscreen, tracing the image,
delineating paint areas and hand pulling each paint color across the screen onto the paper or canvas.
The term was coined by writer, curator and Los Angeles Times art critic Jules Langsner, along with Peter Selz, in 1959, to describe the work of painters from California, who, in their reaction to the more painterly or gestural forms of Abstract expressionism, adopted a knowingly impersonal
paint application and
delineated areas of color with particular sharpness and clarity.