Drawing a tea cup seems like a beginner's task. It’s a staple of every high school art class and every "intro to still life" YouTube tutorial you've ever clicked on. But honestly? Getting that porcelain curve to look like it’s actually sitting on a table—and not sliding off into a 2D abyss—is deceptively hard. Most people mess up the "ellipse," which is just a fancy word for the circle at the top seen from an angle. If you get the ellipse wrong, the whole thing falls apart. It doesn't matter how pretty your floral pattern is or how delicate the handle looks.
I’ve spent years looking at sketches where the tea cup looks like it’s being viewed from the top and the side at the same time. It’s a common perspective trap. You know the cup is round, so your brain tries to force you to draw a circle. But your eyes are seeing an oval. Bridging that gap between what you know and what you see is the secret sauce.
The geometry of the perfect sip
Before you even touch a 2B pencil to the paper, you have to understand that a tea cup is basically just a cylinder that got a little fancy. It’s a series of stacked ovals. If you can draw a decent oval, you can learn how to draw a tea cup that actually looks three-dimensional.
Think about the water line. If the cup is half-full, that liquid surface is another ellipse. It has to match the curve of the top rim and the curve of the base. If those curves don't align, the cup looks warped. It looks like it was sat too close to a radiator and started to melt.
Professional illustrators often talk about "ghosting" the lines. This means moving your whole arm from the shoulder to draw the shape in the air above the paper before you actually let the lead hit the grain. It sounds a bit woo-woo, but it works. It builds muscle memory. It stops your wrist from flickering and making those jagged, hairy lines that scream "amateur."
Why the handle is a nightmare
Handles are the worst. Seriously. They are the part of the cup that most people avoid until the very end, and then they just sort of "tack it on" like a stray ear.
A handle isn't just a C-shape stuck to the side. It has thickness. It has an "attachment point" where the ceramic meets the body of the cup. If you don't draw those attachment points, the handle looks like it's floating. You have to visualize the handle as a 3D ribbon. It twists. It has a top surface that catches the light and a bottom surface that stays in shadow.
- Start with the outer curve.
- Then, draw the inner curve, but make sure it follows the perspective of the cup's body.
- Add the "thickness" by drawing a third line that connects the two.
Setting the stage: Light and Shadow
A white porcelain cup isn't actually white. If you look at a real tea cup under a desk lamp, you'll see blues, greys, and maybe even some warm yellows reflected from the table. The "local color" is white, but the "observed color" is a mess of shadows.
The highlight—that tiny, bright white spot where the light hits the rim—is what makes it look like ceramic. Without that highlight, it’s just a grey blob. You need contrast. You need the darkest shadow to be right next to the brightest light. That’s called chiaroscuro, a technique used by masters like Caravaggio, though he was usually painting decapitated heads and not Earl Grey.
The Saucer: The unsung hero
Don't skip the saucer. A tea cup without a saucer looks lonely and unfinished. But the saucer is just another ellipse—a much wider, flatter one. It needs to wrap around the base of the cup.
A mistake I see constantly is drawing the saucer too "fat." Because it's flat on the table, the ellipse of a saucer is almost always much narrower than the ellipse of the cup's rim. If you draw it too round, it looks like the cup is sitting on a dinner plate that’s being tilted toward the viewer.
Step-by-step breakdown (The non-robotic way)
- The Central Axis: Draw a vertical line. This is your spine. It keeps everything symmetrical. If your cup leans, it’s because you ignored this line.
- Top and Bottom Ellipses: Sketch a wide oval at the top and a smaller, narrower one at the bottom. Connect them with two slightly curved lines for the sides.
- The Foot: Most tea cups have a "foot"—a little pedestal at the bottom. Don't forget it. It's a tiny detail that adds a lot of realism.
- Refining the Rim: Tea cups have thickness. Don't just draw one line for the top. Draw two, very close together, to show the width of the porcelain. This is where you'll put your teeny-tiny highlights later.
- Shading the Interior: Usually, if the light is coming from the left, the inside right of the cup will be in shadow, while the outside right will be in shadow too. It’s an inversion.
You've got to be careful with your eraser. If you scrub too hard, you'll ruin the tooth of the paper, and your shading will look muddy. Use a kneaded eraser. Just dab at the highlights to lift the graphite off rather than rubbing it.
Common pitfalls to avoid
People tend to draw what they think they see. They think the bottom of the cup is flat. It’s not. Unless you are looking at the cup at eye level—meaning your eyeball is literally touching the table—the bottom of the cup will always be a curve.
Another thing: the "hairy line" syndrome. Stop sketching with tiny, hesitant strokes. It makes the cup look fuzzy. Ceramic is smooth. Ceramic is hard. Your lines should reflect that. Use a long, continuous stroke. If you mess up, erase it and try again. One clean line is worth fifty messy ones.
Real-world inspiration
Look at the work of Stan Prokopenko. He’s a master of breaking down complex shapes into simple forms. While he mostly does anatomy, his principles of "form" and "value" apply perfectly to something as simple as a tea cup. He emphasizes that everything is just a variation of a sphere, a cylinder, or a cube.
Also, check out some 17th-century Dutch still-life paintings. Those guys were obsessed with how light reflects off glass and ceramic. They didn't have cameras, so they had to understand the physics of light. They knew that a cup reflects the room around it. If you look closely at a well-drawn cup, you might see a tiny, distorted reflection of a window.
Moving beyond the basic sketch
Once you've mastered how to draw a tea cup in its simplest form, start playing with textures. Is it a rustic, stoneware mug with a grainy texture? Or a fine bone china cup that’s almost translucent?
If it's bone china, the shadows will be softer. Some light might even pass through the material. If it's heavy pottery, the shadows will be deep and the edges will be thicker and less precise.
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Adding the tea
If there's liquid inside, remember the "meniscus." That’s the way the liquid slightly curves up where it touches the edge of the cup. It’s a tiny detail, but it’s what makes the tea look like it's actually in the cup and not just a brown circle floating on top.
And steam? Don't draw steam like cartoon squiggles. Steam is a vapor. Use your finger or a blending stump to softly smudge some very light graphite above the cup. It should be barely there.
Actionable Next Steps
To really nail this, don't just draw from your head. Your brain is a liar. It wants to simplify things.
- Set up a "model": Grab a real tea cup and put it on a table.
- Single Light Source: Turn off the overhead lights and use a single lamp from the side. This creates "dramatic" shadows that are much easier to see and draw.
- Draw 10 Ellipses: Before you start the cup, fill a whole page with ovals of different widths. Warm up that shoulder.
- The "Squint" Test: Squint your eyes at your reference cup. This blurs the details and lets you see the big shapes of light and dark. Map those out first.
- Change the Angle: Once you finish one drawing, stand up. Look at the cup from a higher angle. Notice how the ovals get "rounder" the more you look down into the cup.
Keep your pencil sharp and your eyes on the object more than the paper. Most people look at their drawing 90% of the time and the object 10%. Flip that. You should be "measuring" the cup with your eyes constantly. Check the width against the height. Check the angle of the handle.
The more you look, the better you'll draw. It's less about hand talent and more about visual honesty.