David Hockney|iPhone and iPad Drawings (2009–2012)

This series brought Hockney's early phone and tablet drawings off the screen and onto paper, as prints 94 centimetres tall.

Thumb, then stylus

He began in 2009, after his sister Margaret told him about 'Brushes', a drawing app for the iPhone. At first he drew with his thumb. "I could hold it in my right hand and my thumb could reach every corner of the screen," he said. Flowers became a daily habit, and 'Lilies' is one of them: "I draw flowers every day on my iPhone and send them to my friends, so they get fresh flowers every morning. And my flowers last." In 2010 he bought one of the first iPads and moved to a stylus. The bigger screen took the work "to a new level", he said, "simply because it's eight times the size of an iPhone, as big as a reasonably sized sketchbook."

What he drew

The subjects are the objects and rooms around him: a wine glass in 'Glass', a glass ashtray in 'Ashtray (2010)', a phone charger in 'Plug' and his own clothes in 'My Shirt And Trousers'. The series ends with his own face. Over about 20 days in March 2012 he drew at least one self-portrait a day on the iPad, and 'Self-Portrait II', 'Self Portrait III, 20 March 2012' and 'Self Portrait IV, 25 March 2012' come from that run.

Shown on screens first

In 'Fleurs fraîches' at the Fondation Pierre Bergé–Yves Saint Laurent in Paris, from October 2010, the drawings were shown on iPhones and iPads rather than on paper. When they were editioned eight years later, 27 of them became prints, and in 2019 Hockney gave a set to the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne.

Before and after

The phone drawings followed the computer drawings of 'Drawing in a Printing Machine (Computer Drawings)', made in Photoshop in 2008 and 2009. On the iPad he went on to draw the arrival of spring at Woldgate in 2011 and in Normandy in 2020, both part of his 'iPad Drawings'. In 2019 he returned to the years of this series for 'My Window (TASCHEN)', a book of 120 phone and tablet drawings of the view from one window.