Wonderful Pistachios

I had left this still life set up overnight after I finished with it...nothing but shells and skins by the time I got up.  These are very popular in my house.

Watercolor on paper, 5 x 8 inches.

I'm very happy with the overall composition of this one (which I should be, I spend like 10 min fiddling with pistachios trying to make them look like they casually spilled out of the bag). 

Most of these little paintings in my book are done with a small round brush, but with this one I also used (for the first time) a small Niji Waterbrush.  It's a synthetic brush that has a hollow barrel that holds water.  When you squeeze it it flows out through the bristles.  I found it extremely useful for getting the gradient in the shadow area because it was small enough to get in the tight spaces, but I didn't have to keep re dipping to cover larger areas connected to the small ones.  An added bonus is that because it's adding more and more water over time the longer you use it the more diluted the pigment you loaded on the brush becomes, which makes it ideal for working gradients in my opinion. I highly recommend it.