In their print projects, Maurice Payne encouraged Hockney to work in innovative ways. Here, the artist’s characteristic line drawing, so well suited to the etching technique, is combined with the use of unconventional tools such as a wire brush to create texture and volume. Print production was a process of discovery for both Payne and Hockney. "We learned as we went along," the master printer later revealed. The expressive mark-making, as well as the sitter’s full-frontal pose, suggests the influence of Van Gogh’s portraits.

In his book Secret Knowledge: Rediscovering the Lost Techniques of the Old Masters, Hockney describes the process of using a camera lucida:

Basically, it is a prism on a stick that creates the illusion of an image of whatever is in front of it on a piece of paper below. . . . When you look through the prism from a single point you can see the person or objects in front and the paper below at the same time. . . . You must use it quickly, for once the eye has moved the image is really lost. A skilled artist could make quick notations, marking the key points of the subject’s features. . . . After these notations have been made, the hard work begins of observing from life and translating the marks into a more complete form.

New digital technology sparked creative experiments in Hockney’s work. In 2008, he began making computer drawings using Photoshop, as in this portrait of Maurice, one of a series of portraits of family, friends, and colleagues drawn in his large studio in Bridlington, Yorkshire. By then, Hockney felt that computer software had advanced enough to keep up with the artist’s hand. He particularly admired the speed with which he could draw with color “directly in a printing machine,” as he described it, unlike the slow process of swapping brushes with oil or watercolor.