It's About Time
By Dalton Parkinson
Pictured above on the photo is a photorealistic illustration of a watch next to its reference image. The photo is on the left and the illustration is on the right. This project was quite intimidating and it proved to be a challenge all 20 hours I spent on it.
I chose this watch (pictured above) initially, and got to work on the face. The texture was too distracting not to work on, and I tried to get it right early on. This was a mistake, because I quickly fell behind the desired time schedule and found myself needing to change things up.
I decided on this new watch design, and got the essential shapes onto the artboard. The Lacoste logo felt too specific and I wanted to change it up, so I changed the logo/hour tick mark to a snake. I got the watch mounts started and shaded them in properly. At this stage, my work on the mounts gave me confidence that I could complete this project right.
I got the crown added, and again, I felt confident. I was critiqued on how simple the circular textures around the watch casing were, so I formed what you see on the upper right portion of the image above. I began working again on textures, so I added the grain to the face plate of the watch. I moved onto the watchband, and the texture I created has no attention. I sought help and struggled through to get what you will see next.
The image above shows you the differences I made. I warped and meshed the new band texture to give it dimension to better fit the viewer's perspective. I tweaked the watch casing circles, glares, and even moved onto the snake, once again. Though stressful, this final product is pleasing to me. I achieved a photorealistic watch by using guides, patterns, textures, gaussian blurs, gradients, and clipping masks. To show you the depth to each dimension, I will close with images of the working space.
After all the changes made, undone, redone, and scrapped for better alternatives, hours spent, and all the times saved my document, it's about time I finished my work on
this watch.
