Making photo-realistic vector graphics has been one of the hardest design projects I have ever overtaken, but it has also been the biggest learning experience as well and the most fun I've ever had with Illustrator. I'm going to be showing the process that I have gone through to create the watch and some tips and tricks with it.

I wasn't sure what type of watch I wanted to create so I began by drawing some sketches to get the creative juices flowing. As I drew more sketches I began to realize I was leaning towards doing a more modern design with it being very minimal. Using my sketches I was able to pick out a reference photo that fit my personality and desire.

This is the very beginnings of my watch creation. Notice how I have the reference photo directly to the left of the object to base my watch off of. I'm focusing on getting the basic shapes down before going into gradients or shadows.

I got super excited as the watch began to take shape. I scratched the lugs (the metal part connecting the watch face to the band) and decided to come back to them. Than I began to add some shadows to the face itself and added the tick marks. The way that I added the shadow was to use the Shape Builder tool and create a half moon. After that I applied a Gaussian Blur and lowered the Opacity. After messing around with it for a while I got to the shade I wanted. 

As you can tell I made a lot of progress since the last photo. I've added the lugs back, added the watch bands, and put on some shadows and gradients. I've begun to add a couple of more shadows on the face and band respectively. The main shadow on the left side was one of the more challenging ones. I used the Option key to drag a copy over to the left and applied the Gaussian Blur again. I lowered the Opacity again and was pretty happy with it.

After adding a few more finishing touches this is the finished product! My vector graphic is on the left with a copy of it being on the right showing off the anchor points. This will hopefully give you an idea of the shapes I used to create it.

This was a huge learning experience for me to take something from just an idea to a concept to an actual product. Let me know what you guys think!