The Yosemite Suite 20

In 2010 Hockney travelled to Yosemite National Park and made a series of drawings of the valley on the iPad. They were printed in large digital editions that keep the luminous colour of the screen. The group includes works in very different moods, from the misty, pale green waterfall in The Yosemite Suite 13 to this brighter and more varied view.

The picture is built from vertical layers. In the foreground, a slender pine is drawn with a dark, branching trunk and clusters of lime-yellow needles, each outlined in white. Behind it, the valley walls are painted in bands of green, with dense hatching on the right that suggests forest and a cloud of cream blossom or scrub. The distant slopes are rendered in yellow, lilac and blue, with the daubs of colour suggesting sunlight on rock. The sky is a flat, pale blue rectangle that stops short of the sheet edges, leaving a border of loose blue scribble.

The mixture of precise outline, soft airbrushed passages and broad, flat strokes is characteristic of the iPad drawings. The picture is optimistic and full of light, its bright spring palette contrasting with the cooler tones of some others in the suite.