David Hockney pays tribute to painter Lucian Freud, who has died at 88

David Hockney reveals the jokes and fascination of sitting for his fellow master painter Lucian Freud, who has died aged 88.

At the turn of the century I had just arrived in London, to stay for a few months. Lucian offered to sit for me, if I would sit for him. I agreed even though I knew he would not give me much time and would expect me to give him a lot.

I would arrive every morning at 8.30 and leave at noon. My best time of day. We usually had a cup of tea first. I walked up through Holland Park and watched the spring arrive, making me very aware how uneventful they were in southern California.

He works very slowly, I also knew he abandoned some portraits, and as I was going to sit a lot I did not want that to happen. So I co-operated. He liked a particular jacket and a blue shirt. I always wore them. I was fascinated to see his methods.

I told him I would like to smoke in that time. He agreed but told me not to mention it to Kate Moss who was his other subject at the time. I only met her with Lucian and enjoyed a cigarette with her outside the restaurant. She was lively, and I could see Lucian enjoyed her and her reputation.

All people who met him were immediately fascinated ... He was thin, he wore very well-tailored, well worn clothes.

The studio in Holland Park was at the top of the house and he almost ran up the stairs. The light came from directly above. A glass roof that is never seen in the paintings but gives very good lighting on the face. Shadows under the nose and chin, very little side lighting. He could control the amount of light through louvres. He took a while to set things up. I sat in a low chair with a reachable ashtray on the floor. I always had a small sketchbook in my pocket. The one unusual thing was that he answered the phone if it rang.
The phone wasn't in the studio, but he heard it (I didn't). It was the time just before his Tate show so I assumed he had to deal with that - it was unusual for him.

Because he works slowly we can talk. He would look very intensely for a while, the eyes very piercing, and I notice rarely lowered. Then, as he mixed the paint, he would talk. All subjects seem to come up, but a lot was gossip about people we both knew.

He could be very pithy and funny about them, very good putdowns that made me laugh. We got on very well, often talking about drawings. He too admired Rembrandt's drawings, that they were all portraits, there were no generic faces in the whole lot.

His palette is perhaps eight colours. He never put the tops back on the tubes so the paint cakes up on them and he flicks this off on the wall with a swipe. He has been doing this on the studio wall for the last 40 years so it is thick with many years' layers. Like a wall in the life rooms at the art schools of the Fifties that I knew, but this was all done by the same hand - a rare and beautiful thing in itself.

Freud's assistant David Dawson took a photograph of me sitting in the chair, the portrait on the easel in front and Lucian coming in the door looking like a butcher in a splattered apron. The overhead natural lighting gives it a theatrical air like a Beckett play.

If we took a break and he was on the phone I would do drawings of things in the studio, the ashtray and worn footboards with a big hole - perhaps where the rat came through I thought. I liked the old fashioned Bohemia of it all - the plates with old beans on them from last night, or even last week. It was like student days, very appealing after very clean New York lofts. I told him: "You can't have a smoke-free Bohemia, by definition."

I suggested to him he could send someone else to see the Andy Warhol exhibition for him, but he would have to go himself to see Matisse and Picasso. He talked of other artists, which was always insightful and entertaining and often bitchy but funny. I looked at the progress each day, and eventually I could work out the exact bit he was looking at, he has a faultless eye for tone.

The palette he never cleaned, just smoothed out bits for mixing which he does for every change of tone. The paint tubes were all on a trolley that didn't look as though it could move. There might have been a hundred. The first time he took a long time to find a tube. I thought he must be looking for a colour he doesn't use much. I was right. It was cerulean blue for my shirt.

As we got into June, I took a break and went to the far north of Norway to see permanent light. He asked me a few things about the visit and the light, but said he rarely travelled, indeed hardly ever left London. He was a great deal more social than I was then. He liked noisy restaurants, but with my hearing they were hard work, and the smoke- free atmosphere I found suffocating. He laughed at my smoking jokes.

It was a very memorable and enjoyable experience and he eventually sat for me for about three hours and fell asleep. He said he would come on an afternoon, the time he usually sleeps. I got one or two things out of it, but I thought his portrait very good indeed - all the hours I sat were layered into it; he had always added, rarely taken anything away. It really shows: they are remarkable works by a great artist.