D
avid Hockney once asked:
“Wasn’t it Degas who said,
‘I’m just a man who likes to
draw’?” Then he added: “That’s me.
I’m just a man who likes to draw”.
It’s true that draughtsmanship has
defined the Yorkshire artist’s whole
career. As a 16-year-old student at
Bradford School of Art, Hockney drew
all day, every day, staying at his easel
until late in the evening. And today,
at the age of 82, he’s still just as
fascinated by the whole process
as he was more than 60 years ago.
Last spring, soon after he moved
into his new house and studio in
Normandy, France, he began to draw
panoramic views of this new domain
on sketchbooks that open out into
one long sheet of paper, like a
concertina. Hockney drew the first of
these,plusatleast 20 othergraphic
works,inthefirstthreeweeksafter
hemovedtoFrance.“AtnightI’dgoto
bedplanningwhatI wasgoingtodo
next,soI alwayshadit inmyhead,”
hetoldmerecently.“I workeveryday- weekendshavenevermademuch
differencetome.It’sa newkindof
drawing.There’sa distinctchange
now,becauseI’mhereinNormandy.”
WithHockney,therealwayshave
beennewkindsofdrawing.Thiswill
beoneofthelessonsofDrawing
fromLife, hisnewexhibitionopening
atLondon’sNationalPortraitGallery
inFebruary.Everyfewyears,starting
intheearly1960s,hehasdeveloped
a novelmedium,usinga particular
toolorsetoftools.Thenewworkshe
Hock
on Dra ng
OPPOSITE PAGE
David Hockney,
Gregory, 1978,
coloured pencil on
paper, 43x35.5cmTOPRIGHTDavid
Hockney,Gregory,
LosAngeles,
March31st
1982,composite
polaroid,37x34cmTALKING TECHNIQUESThe “man who likes to draw” DAVID HOCKNEY
exclusively shares his thoughts on draughtsmanship
with his close friend and biographer MARTIN GAYFORDhas been making in France are made
with reed pens – an implement used
by both Van Gogh and Rembrandt- and coloured inks. But before that,
he was using the most modern of
media, digital scanning and editing,
to produce a series of what he calls
“photographic drawings”. In the earlier
part of the last decade, he famously
drew prolifically on his iPhone and
iPad – first using his thumb and finger
on the smaller screen, then a stylus.
Drawing, then, for Hockney is
an activity with a broad definition.
Under that heading, for example,
he includes the kind of image-editing
you can do with Photoshop. Long ago,
he noted the category of “badly-drawn
photographs”, in which the original
picture has been adjusted with little
regard for anatomical accuracy or
© DAVID HOCKNEY. PHOTO CREDITS: RICHARD SCHMIDT. COLLECTION THE DAVID HOCKNEY FOUNDATION spatial coherence.