Digital : Works | David Hockney

David Hockney in studio drawing in computer, 2008 - photo: Jean Piere Goncalves de Lima

The computer is a useful tool. Photoshop is a computer tool for picture making. It in effect allows you to draw directly in a printing machine, one of its many uses. One draws with the colours the printing machine has, and reprinting machine is one anyone can have. They are now superior to any other kind of printing, but because it’s very slow, of limited commercial appeal.

I used to think the computer was too slow for a draughtsman. You had finished a line, and the computer was 15 seconds later, and absurd position for someone drawing, but thins have improved, and it now enables one to draw very freely and fast with colour. There are advantages and disadvantages to anything new in mediums for artists, but the speed allowed here with colour is something new, swapping brushes in the hand with oil or watercolour takes time. These prints are made by drawing and collage, they exist either in the computer or on a piece of paper, they were made for printing, and so, will be printed. They are not photographic reproductions. My idea is to make them in small editions between 7 and 25.

David Hockney, November 2008