Estes played a key role in elevating the status of screenprints in the 1970s. With the prints in this portfolio, his first printmaking effort, Estes stretched the limits of the medium by using an average of between 50 and 115 colors on each impression. He collaborated with Luitpold and Michael Domberger in Stuttgart because of their excellent reputation with the medium and because there were no screenprint shops as accomplished in the U.S. In a 1979 interview with John Arthur published in Print Collector's Newsletter, Estes described how he arrived at doing screenprints, instead of lithographs or aquatints: "It seemed to me that silkscreen was very clean - sharp lines and opaque inks. I could work in layers, which is more or less the way I paint. It seemed closer to the way I work, starting out very broad, with masses of color, and adding on top of it. Ther're limitations. The cut film gives a hard, sharp line, but even that seems appropriate to the way I work - which is to start out with very broad colors and simple shapes and then add things on top of that to get the details and tonal balance. You can get it perfect - you don't ever have to worry about a color or tone until you print it. Just mix the color you want and put it on. It's limiting in the sense that the line is cut out so it's pretty hard and sharp. That seemed to fit pretty well with most of what I'm doing with the paintings - the sharpness of the line."