This is just before I punched in all the highlights and lightened the background. I'll post the finished
image tomorrow. This was the second approach to painting this teacup. I really overworked the first one and also made a bad decision to paint from a photo that I didn't set up very well. Not enough
contrast in the lighting so of course the end result was less than pleasing. That's what happens when
you launch right in to a painting without doing a few "lesser" works to warm up with. This one
came right after and is much closer to what I wanted the outcome to be.