Halftone

On YokoFolio, pick the style Halftone and then your city, and widen the radius if the list is short. Look at the regularity of the grid: rows should stay aligned, dots round and clean, and their size should change smoothly to build the tones. Step back from the photo — the image should appear as a whole, like a printed picture. Healed photos tell you whether the dots stayed distinct.

Images that come from print culture: a comic panel, a pop art portrait, a retro advertisement, a newspaper photo, a movie still, a speech bubble, a classic pin-up. Halftone also works as a texture inside another design — a gradient of dots filling a shape, a fade across a sleeve. Strong, simple images with clear contrast read best, because the dots have to carry all the shading.

Large, well-spaced dots usually age well and keep the printed look longer. Very small, tight dots are the risk: as the ink spreads slightly under the skin over the years, they can merge into a flat gray and the grid effect fades. A good artist sizes the dots for your skin and for the size of the piece. If the design has to be small, ask for a coarser screen — fewer, bigger dots last better.

Both are made of dots, but they don't use them the same way. In halftone, the dots sit on a regular grid, like printing, and their size changes to make light and shadow. In dotwork, the artist places the dots freely by hand, and it's the density of the stippling — many dots or few — that makes the tone. If you see a mechanical grid, it's halftone; if the dots are scattered by hand, it's Dotwork.