He draws all the time, when he isn't smoking and talking, which he also does a lot. He has a shrewd sense of what his drawing is worth to a greedy world: these notebooks include plenty of sketches across two pages, and are done on both sides, so "they can't tear them up" and mount them for selling one day.

Todays Gaurdian on Hockney. Andrew Morrow

it goes on to discuss how conserative he has become, not reactionary, but how calm and wonderful his images seem, and how he no longer needs to take the photos or make things bigger or more erotic or more about class and money or geography.
the image seems enough, which can be connected to his return to england from socal, originally to pose for lucien freud, he has a big well lit studio near hackney, and walks thru the park and he seems happy to be an old man coming home. this is not a bad thing.