David Hockney has always had a quality about his work that makes you look at the hues and shapes in nature a little differently. You suddenly see the curves and swirls in forest landscapes and long to see your reflection in water. In his new book, Simon Elliott not only takes on the task of illustrating the works of his longtime artistic inspiration, but he interviews him, incorporating his biography in a graphic novel-esque book.

Simon, like many of us, had a fascination with art making as a child, and later detached himself in the pursuit of a different journey. Working as a barrister by day, during the lockdown he found himself with a wealth of free time to draw and paint. “During that time I was making as many as 20 (pretty bad) paintings a day,” he tells us. Falling in love with the art of making again, he has been drawing every day since, and connecting to all the art that surrounds him – gallery trips and long walks to look at street art on Brick Lane.

Simon’s style often fuses sketchy lines and bright colours that have an inherent narrative quality. “I try not to make things look too finished. I try to lean into the fact that I’m entirely untrained, and therefore I have no idea how things are ‘supposed’ to be done,” he tells us. Throughout Hockney: A Graphic Life, his style gradually shifts to mirror Hockney’s artistic periods, from his pop art paintings depicting the everyday among family and friends, to his more flower-filled iPad drawings. “I adopted the graphic novel(ish) format as it allowed me to fit all the material in. It was something that seemed important in telling the story of an artist still busily working away at the age of 86,” he adds.