Would you look at the time?

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Utilizing Illustrator to create something of the utmost realism was a daunting task. Using a product photo of a watch confined me to parameters which prevented me from reverting to something more comfortable to me. What you see is what you have to make. This project forced me to stretch what I thought were my abilities in Illustrator and its capabilities. What I found most effective was “looking at the time” or really seeing what shapes were there, as opposed to relying on my preconceived notion of how light and shadow work and what watches look like.

My sketches made me sit down and focus on the details that are usually overlooked. If you look with the intention to create, you see so much more. Here I tested out shape and shadow.

For my first draft, I started with basic shapes. I was laying down elements to get an idea of the parts it would take to create. I was testing out some details toward the beginning too. This was so that I could jump the hurdle of getting accustomed to gradients and develop enough confidence to move forward with my design.

Here is my reference photo:

My second draft reverted back to more basic shapes and numbers. I wanted to get this down before I continued with more detail on the shine because I wasn’t progressing as much. Here you can see that I began to realize how vital using blur is in putting shadows in places that are subtle and unnoticed, but necessary in order to add realism.

When I moved on to the detail in the reflection in the watch rim, I started to use clipping masks and the “draw behind” tool to precisely place blurs and colors. I was experimenting with other effects as using just color where I saw it in the photo was very simple and cartoon-looking.

Shown above is my watch in the middle-late stages of production. I did a complete overhaul of my watch casing highlights/shadows. While frustrating, It added a great deal of accuracy to the casing. This was one area I was advised to change as it wasn't consistent with the hypothetical light source of my watch.

Feedback I received included the realism of my lugs and wristband. As seen above, I was able to rasterize the lines of a texture to overlay in an opacity mask to add to the lugs. I did the same process for the leather texture of the band.

Here is my final result. Although the image on the right was created using vectors, it portrays a watch in a photo-realistic way through the attention to shape created by light and shadow, and color being placed in order to make the watch seem like a tangible object. By "looking at the time" I saw parts of a watch I never noticed before. I made sure to cater my view depending on the material of the part of the watch, whether that be metal, leather or string. Extensive examination of the photo example gave me ample understanding of what happens with real-life objects in photos.