Maurice Payne, 2008

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.