iPad drawing: The Blue Plate

There's a school of thought that holds that every still-life is a memento mori, whether the artist has included a skull or not. The idea is implicit in the French word for the genre, nature mort.

The thing about still-lives is that they're supposed to be still. But those done on the iPad are anything but. The colours are too lively, the strokes record every gesture of the artist's finger. And of course, in a literal sense, they are alive with the electricity that maintains the image on our screens.

Of course, in its original incarnation the still-life was about conspicuous consumption. What was best in life was for the sideboard to groan with gold and silver plate, a big side of bacon, and bones of your enemies. But if that wasn't possible, a painting of it made a good substitute.

iPad still-lives don't work exactly like that either. How exactly they do work is an open question.

Tarragon made this still-life using the brushes app on the iPad.