The arrival of spring in Woldgate, iPad

A Yorkshire woodland path in early spring stretches before us, its trees still stripped bare but clearly humming with new life. This is part of David Hockney's series "The Arrival of Spring in Woldgate," created in 2011 when the artist was in his seventies and had returned to the countryside of his youth. Though it reads like a painting, Hockney made the whole thing on an iPad, using his finger and a stylus. He took to the tablet with genuine excitement, treating it as a serious tool rather than a novelty, and produced dozens of these landscape studies charting the seasons along the same familiar lanes.

Color is where this piece really comes alive. Pinks and lavenders scatter across the muddy path, deep greens mark the evergreens, and quick dots and flicks hint at buds pushing out along every branch. These are not the muted tones you would expect from a cold English spring, and that mismatch is deliberate. Hockney was after the feeling of nature stirring awake, that restless moment just before everything explodes into bloom. His loose, rapid line work keeps the scene fresh and unfussy, like a sketch caught in a single burst.

There is something rather sweet about an artist famous for California swimming pools and dazzling sunshine finding so much delight in a soggy Yorkshire footpath. For Hockney, really looking at the ordinary world was one of life's quiet joys, and this cheerful little scene shows exactly why.