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.

Mug #2

Technically this is mug painting #3. But I have fallen in love with the gessoboards to the point that I am going to redo the first mug in the series on a board; hence the renumbering.

I'm not going to go through my normal pro/con/lesson process right now as this is still a work in progress and may have to span a few days. I'm not going for super realistic here. I do want to keep it very very loose but the emblem in the middle is causing me serious headaches. My initial rough draw in was very very wrong. Even though I went over that initial sketch, it seems to still be in my head. And despite the fact that it's NOT on the board, I'm still painting like it is. So I think I may need to step away from this for a few minutes and clear my mind... after I go back into my studio and wipe off the emblem which is so crooked it's hurting my brain.

EDIT: Well after wiping out and redoing the emblem four times, I finally gave up. I am going to include the emblem but I'm going to wait for the painting to dry and redo it again. The emblem doesn't have a lot of contrast with the board so I'm having to paint in the mug color to really check to see if it's right which is a lot of work to keep removing and redoing. Plus I'm fighting against the wet edges as well. Letting it dry will remove some of the other challenges and will let me focus on getting the damned thing drawn in properly. I managed to get in the darks, the midtones and the lights painted onto the mug. There is a lot of reflective light and other reflections going on.

EDIT 2: Fiddled with the painting again. Ended up wiping out the handle... twice.