After many mistakes...

PRO
1) The color of the mug is spot on. I'd like to say it took a deep understanding of color to nail it just right but it's just caput mortem straight out of the tube. I experimented with some different color mixtures but nothing was coming close and when I mixed the caput mortem with some quinacridone red mixed in.
2) I love the way the rim came out.
3) The background color was a good choice. I like taking colors straight out of the tube and using them in the background because it isn't often that you get to use a color straight out of the tube and I do love naples yellow.

CON
1) It's crooked. I'm not sure how it's crooked or what's making it seem crooked but it is.
2) The highlights on the handle were very difficult and they still don't seem right to me but I'm not sure why.

LESSON
Changing the value of a color doesn't always mean adding white. I started painting the mug's mid-tones with the caput mortem mixed in with white and it looked so wrong. I mean like really wrong. That was when I discovered that mixing the quinacridone red made the value of the caput mortem lighter. The color of this mug was extremely difficult. The darkness of the color just made it very difficult to see the values in the mug. I also had a lot of difficulty reproducing the lighter mid-tones. I've also realized that I need to control the light in my studio better. I'm not sure how I'm going to be able to do that but I have to do it. It's making things way harder for me than they need to be. All of the bouncing light is really making some things way more confusing than they need to be.