Drawing Study: Cup on the side

Another drawing of a cup. I've got a lot of these around the house. This decorative tea cup was one of my wife's, Melissa, grandmothers and was passed onto Melissa. The cup is the standard thin tea cup that people held with the pinky extended.

While drawing this teacup, I used the basic procedure of drawing the full rounded ovals and then erasing the portions of the oval that is covered by another nearer object. This technique seems to work pretty well as my ovals are starting to look more appropriate and rounded.

The hardest part of this drawing involved the inside of the teacup and the floral design. The inside of the cup seems to be a bit flat. I'm going to have to study the cup more and determine what makes it look rounded.. I think that it has to do with the rounding of the shadow curves, but not quite sure. This also holds true with the design. On the saucer, there is a design of a flower, but nothing on the flower indicates that it arches upwards. I'm going to need to just draw the plate without the cup and see how the flower is drawn.

Overall, the parts that I like about this drawing are the shape of the cup/saucer, the shadows of the cup on the saucer, the tabletop/background, and the base of the cup. I thought that they were adequately done. The parts that need work are the shadows inside of the cup (too flat) and the flowers on the saucer (too flat).