For the photorealistic watch I was told that it would take somewhere between 30-50 hours. I feel like I have no time to begin with, but adding a huge project to my pile of things to do sounded like the worst idea possible. SO keeping all of that in mind I decided to choose a watch that I could use in my internship. The watch I chose is a Michael Kors watch, but I decided to leave the logo off of the watch because I intend to make an ad that says "It's TIME to book your wedding with The Barn on 1st." I think that the logo would distract from the ad itself. 

For the sketches that I did I was still deciding between 2 watches, so there is some variation in the sketches and how they look. The main reason for the sketching was to learn more about the watch itself. I mean anyone can sketch a watch, but not everyone will understand what they are sketching (i.e. the pieces of the watch, how the shadows occur, and gradients). 

I did about one million drafts of this project. I was able to get the most valuable input by meeting with my mentor. The watch that I chose has around 200 little diamonds on it, which I struggled the most with. 

If you look at the image on the left (my illustration) you will see that the diamonds have a brown blur around the edge, The diamonds are much brighter in the reference, something that I really struggled with doing. After meeting with my mentor the diamonds look like this 

I personally think that the diamonds look so much better now. My favorite thing that I did was add the final highlights and shadows to the watch. It is amazing what a tiny bit of detail adds to an image. 

The whole point of this project was to work on gradients and make a photorealistic watch. I feel that I did that. Almost every shape in this watch has a gradient. I love that I learned to create this style of vector image. Isn't it crazy that I spent 30+ hours on this watch. I am willing to bet that I could have spent at least 10 more hours. What do you guys think?