For this project I've been working on, I wanted to recreate a photograph of a watch into a vector graphic that looks identical. My goal was to use all the tools that Illustrator has to offer in order to transform a simple vector into a realistic design.

I began doing this by sketching out the different parts of a common watch. I drew all of them as I would have imagined. I then looked up different watches online and drew some of their parts as well. I tried to look at every single aspect of the watches, including shadowing, highlights and texture, in order for me to really understand how to recreate it. 

After much research, I chose the following watch to start redesigning. I began with drawing out the simple shapes that make up the watch. It was fairly easy to build the watch by noticing what shapes were being used on each part. 

Getting the shadows and colors just right was very important. I played around with gradience a ton to give it a look that light was hitting the watch. I was able to use the eyedropper tool and change opacity to get most of the colors. 

The most difficult part for me was getting the dial on the side to look just right with all of its notches, and the shadowing and stitching on the straps. After hours and hours, I was able to create a watch that looked extremely close to the photographed watch. With the use of gradience, highlights, shadows, and textures, the vector graphic came out to look realistic.