The Arrival Of Spring In Woldgate, East Yorkshire In 2011 (twenty eleven) - 19 March

Within this print, a road recedes into the distance bordered by a line of trees, their branches still bare and yet suggestive of new life. A fragment of wall sits on the right of the composition like a missing jigsaw piece. Fine lines mix with gestural marks and crayon like areas of shading in this detailed digital drawing.

Beginning in January 2011 and ending in early June, each drawing, and subsequent digital print, from The Arrival of Spring series documents a day in the life of the countryside of the artist’s native Yorkshire which he returned to after many decades in California, in the early 2000s. Here we see him reengaging with the changing colour and light of this verdant landscape which is at odds with the bright flatness of the Western desert.

With this series Hockney takes advantage of the spontaneity and immediacy offered by the iPad’s drawing app to produce multiple sketches, making full use of different tools and techniques to achieve effects which would have once required hours spent in a print workshop and perhaps the help of assistants. With the arrival of the iPad in 2010 Hockney achieved full independence as a printmaker and became prolific, returning to his favourite subjects such as interiors, still lifes and flowers again and again as part of his daily practice of drawing.