Learn how to create an amazing photorealistic watch in this new premium tutorial. This tutorial is written for intermediate illustrator users to attain an expert level in illustration. In this tutorial, you will get an indepth knowledge about creating objects with photorealism.

Let’s see how to create a photorealistic watch in this tutorial.

Difficulty: Intermediate – Advanced tutorial
Requirements: Adobe Illustrator

What will you get?

• Instant download of PDF e-book (42 pages, 125 steps)
• Comes with Ai file for easy reference
• Detailed step by step tutorial to create a photorealistic watch
  

Tutorial Screenshots:

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1. Premium Tutorial: Digital Watch
2. Premium Tutorial: Photorealistic Vector Car
3. Premium Tutorial: Electric Guitar

This tutorial will take you through the process of creating a purified water illustration step by step. Through these steps you will learn how to use a gradient mesh tool in creating realistic gradient effects and other techniques as well. Knowledge of using the Pen tool and creating fills can help. But it will still be easy even to those who didn’t have a first hand experience with Illustrator. Upon completing this tutorial, you will learn how to use the gradient, mesh tool and other techniques like wrap, blends and filters.

Difficulty: Intermediate – Advanced tutorial
Requirements: Adobe Illustrator

What will you get?

• Instant download of PDF e-book (54 pages, 167 steps)
• Comes with Ai file for easy reference
• Detailed step by step tutorial to create a realistic vector water illustration
  

Tutorial Screenshots:

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2. Day 18: Photorealism with Gradient Mesh
3. Premium Tutorial: Draw a Banana

This tutorial will show you how to create a beautiful Holland  landscape filled full of colorful tulips and a traditional Dutch windmill. We will start by creating a red tulip flower with the Gradient Mesh tool and then make yellow and purple color variations of the tulips. Then we will create the windmill using simple gradients and solid fills and finally we will arrange all the elements to complete our landscape. I have included steps that are crucial to get the desired look assuming that the user is familiar with basic Illustrator drawing and coloring tools. So let’s start creating!

Drawing the Tulips

1. Let’s begin with the red tulip flower. Draw a flower petal with the Pen tool (P) as shown and fill it with a red middle tone in the petal. I have filled #F1643A. Select the petal and create a gradient mesh by selecting Object > Create Gradient Mesh from the main menu. In the resulting dialogue box enter values as shown.

2. To give dimension to the petal, select specific nodes of the petals with the Direct Selection Tool (A) and color them in shades of red. I have also shifted some nodes by selecting them with the Direct Selection tool and using the up and down arrow keys. Add deeper red to nodes in the dark as shown above and add lighter colors to the highlighted parts of the petal. You can add new nodes wherever you feel appropriate by clicking the petal using the Mesh tool (U).

3. Right click the petal we just created and select Transform> Reflect. In the resulting dialogue box select the options as shown and click the Copy button. This creates a copy of the petal and flips it. Arrange the new petal in front of the first one. Add some darker shades to the overlapped petal for visual separation. Draw the other petals with the pen tool as shown and apply the gradient mesh tool to each petal using your judgment. Color them such that the highlighted portions stand out and the darker portions recede. Our red tulip is ready!

4. We will now create the yellow and purple variations of the flower. I have converted the red petals to yellow and purple by gradually selecting nodes and recoloring them. For the yellow tulip select the darkest nodes and fill them with a deep orange like #F26C26. For the middle tone use #F9EC31. Make the highlighted nodes white.

5. Repeat the same process for the purple tulips using shades of purple. For the purple middle tone I have used #C8187F. For the darker nodes I have used #82153C and for the highlights I have used white. The tulips are now ready!

Tulip Stem and Leaves

6. For the stem of the plant draw a slightly bent line with the Pen tool (P) and make the stroke weight 18pts. This will give our stem the desired thickness. Keep the stroke selected and select Object > Path > Outline Stroke from the main menu. Fill the resulting shape with a green gradient as shown. To make the stem a little slender select the top right node with the Direct Selection Tool (A) and shift it a little to the left. Repeat the same with the bottom right node if required. This completes the stem of our tulip plant.

7. Draw the first leaf with a pen tool as shown. Fill the leaf with any color and draw a slightly bent stroke with the pen tool from the tip of the leaf to the bottom dividing it into 2 vertical halves. Select the leaf and the stroke and select Window > Pathfinder > Divide.  This will split the leaf into 2 parts and we can now apply different green gradients to each half. Apply gradients with values similar to the stem gradient and make variations in colors to match the leaf colors below. Repeat the same process with the second leaf.

8. To arrange our plant keep the first leaf at the back then place the second leaf on top of it. Arrange the stem behind the front half of the second leaf as shown. The stem now looks as if has grown from between the two leaves. Make sure the bottom nodes of both the leaves and the stem align in a line. This will make our plant look neat.

9. Group the plant we just created and duplicate it 2 times. Arrange the 3 tulips on top of the plant as shown. Our colorful tulip plants are ready!

Creating the Windmill

10. It’s time to create the windmill now! Our windmill has 4 main parts – base, body, head and fan. It is a good idea to create all the parts in different layers for ease of editing.

11. Draw the base and body of the windmill with the pen tool as shown. Draw a vertical dividing line that divides the body and the base into two parts. Select the two shapes and the dividing line and select Window > Pathfinder > Divide. This will divide the base and body of the windmill into two vertical parts each. Delete extra lines if any.

12. Fill each part of the windmill with colors as shown. Then draw a triangular shape over the right side of windmill (for a slight shadow) and fill it with a gradient. Use a darker color like #8A6338 at both ends of the gradient and reduce the opacity of the color at the right end to 0%. This will merge the gradient in the body of the windmill and give our windmill a shadow on its body.

13. On a new layer draw the head of the windmill with the pen tool and fill each part of the head with gradients as shown.

14. With the Ellipse tool (L) draw an ellipse on a new layer to create the centre of the windmill fan. Draw the shapes as shown to give thickness to this centre ellipse. Draw another ellipse at the back to make the base which connects the fan blades. Color the shapes as shown.

15. Draw the fan blades using the pen tool as shown. The part of the fan which is attached to the centre wheel is narrow and it widens at the outer end. Draw all four blades around the centre wheel and fill them with a orange red gradient as shown. To create the black part of the blade, draw a vertical line which is parallel to one side of the fan blade. Then select the line and the blade shape and use Windows > Pathfinder > Divide. In the resulting smaller shape fill #666666. The windmill fan is ready.

16. There are 2 different windows in the windmill. We will create each of them on a separate layer and then place them on the windmill later. Using the pen tool, draw the windows and fill colors as shown.

17. Now that all the windmill parts are ready we will put them together. With the windmill base as the object at the back, place the body over it. Place the windmill fan along with the centre wheel as the topmost object on the windmill head.

18. Duplicate the first window two times and place it on the right side of the windmill body. Refer the final windmill below for the placement and size of windows. Duplicate the second window once and place one of it on the bottom right of the windmill body. Place the other on the windmill head.

19. To create the supports of our windmill, use the Rectangle Tool (M) and draw narrow but long rectangles. Color them in shades of brown and arrange them vertically and horizontally behind the fan blades as per our final windmill below. Group all parts of the windmill. Below is an outline view of the completed windmill for a better idea of placement of objects.

Creating the Background

20.  The background of our landscape is made of a bright blue radial gradient for the sky and fresh green linear gradients for the grass.

21. To create the sky, draw a rectangle that covers the entire artboard with the Rectangle Tool (M). Make sure you create the rectangle in a new layer and place this layer at the bottom of the layer stack in the layers panel. Fill the rectangle with a blue radial gradient as shown.

22. Make the top part of the sky a bit darker than the rest of the gradient by adding a linear gradient at the top. Draw a rectangle which covers the width of the artboard and give it a linear gradient as shown. Use a darker blue like # 2989CA at both ends of the gradient and reduce the opacity of the color at the right end to 0%. The new gradient should appear merged with the gradient below.

23. To make the ground we will draw the shapes of the ground with the pen tool first. All 3 shapes should be closed as we have to fill different gradients for each. The shape at the front is the largest and the one at the back is the smallest. This creates an illusion of perspective in the scene.

24. Fill the shapes using the gradient tool as shown.

Arranging the Elements

25. The last step in our tutorial is arranging all the elements on the artboard. For aligning the elements with correct perspective, take a new layer and draw some basic guide lines as shown below. The horizontal line depicts the horizon. The other lines are simply guides for us to arrange the tulip plants.

26. Let’s start with fixing the place of the windmill. Place the windmill on the horizon line at the right of the artboard. The white part of the sky gradient should fall behind the windmill.

27. Now we will create the red tulip patch. The tulips near the windmill will be the smallest and the ones near us will be the largest. Duplicate the red tulip plant to create 4 tulips and arrange them as shown.

28. Duplicate a tulip again, right click it and select Transform > Scale and scale it by 90%. Arrange the smaller tulip behind the first tulip line. Keep scaling and arranging tulips to complete the red tulip rows. You can also horizontally flip some tulips, delete or add leaves to plants for interesting variations.

29. To delete parts of the tulip plants that have come out of the artboard draw a rectangle over the portion to be deleted. Select the tulips and the rectangle and select Windows > Pathfinder > Trim. Delete the unwanted parts.

30. Repeat the same process as the red tulips for the yellow and purple tulips. Delete the layer of the guide lines we have created. The field is ready! The only thing remaining now is enhancing the scene by adding clouds and grass to it.

Adding Grass and Clouds

31. Access the Symbol library by going to Windows > Symbols in the main menu. Click on the ‘options’ icon on the top right corner of the symbols panel and select Open Symbol Library. Select Nature. In the Nature library you will find the clouds and grass symbols. Drag them onto the artboard on seperate layers.

32. Select the grass symbol and click the Break Link button that appears in a row just below the main menu. This will break the link of the symbol and you can edit the symbol freely. Make color and size variations in the grass symbol and arrange it behind the tulips and around the windmill. Make sure the grass at the farthest end is smallest in size.

Our beautiful European tulip field landscape is ready!

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2. Illustrator Tutorial: Gradient Mesh Flower
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In this tutorial, you will learn lots about drawing a realistic looking banana. I will explain to you step by step on how to achieve this photo realistic effect using advanced gradient mesh techniques. You will begin by drawing the mesh of the banana and learn how to adjust and fill the mesh points to achieve this look.

Difficulty: Intermediate – Advanced tutorial
Requirements: Adobe Illustrator

What will you get?

• Instant download of PDF e-book (12 pages, 30 steps)
• Comes with Ai file for easy reference
• Detailed step by step tutorial to create a vector banana
  

Tutorial Screenshots:

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Related posts:

1. 13 Amazing Gradient Mesh Tutorials
2. Illustrator Tutorial: Draw a Sunglass Using Gradient Mesh
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This tutorial will take you through the process of creating a concept art on Phone applications. It will teach you how to use the 3D tools in Illustrator, symbols, Illustrator scripts speed up the creation of this illustration. You will also learn to draw maps, social icons, calendar, clock, envelope in isometric style.

Difficulty: Beginner – Intermediate tutorial
Requirements: Adobe Illustrator

What will you get?

• Instant download of PDF e-book (79 pages, 158 steps)
• Comes with Ai file for easy reference
• Detailed step by step tutorial to create a phone applications concept
  

Tutorial Screenshots:

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3. Color Theory

This quick Illustrator tip will teach you how to create a nice vector bubble easily in Adobe. Illustrator. It is actually very easy to draw a bubble by using Feather and some layer transparency tricks. Let’s find out how to do it.

1. First step is to draw a circle and fill it with a radial gradient from green to white at the end to achieve something like below.

2. Next we duplicate the circle and create another radial gradient. Use the gradient tool and click and drag to adjust the direction of the radial gradient to get something like below.

3. Move the second layer we just created over the top layer. Adjust Transparency to Lighten and lower the opacity.

4. Let’s move on to create the highlight at the left side. Create 2 cirles and offset the top circle like below. Open up Pathfinder and select minus from top to get something like this.

5. Apply a feather to it by going to Effect > Stylize > Feather. Set the Feather Radius to 6px. Also reduce the Transparency to 70% to give it a see through look.

6. Use the same method to add 2 circle highlight. Our vector bubble is not completed!

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This tutorial will show you how to draw a nice sunglass using gradient mesh in Adobe Illustrator. I have made it simple to follow so that you don’t need to be an expert to draw a sunglass like this. It can be done with a few tools and techniques. It is a very good tutorial on learning the complicated gradient mesh tool. Enough said, let’s find out how this is done.

Drawing the Vector Sunglass

1. So we can start working with the sunglass now. Open Illustrator and make a new document. To make a new document, go to the file menu and select New or simply press Ctrl+N. From the new dialogue document box, give any name you like in the name input box. Choose 800 x 600 preset from the size drop down menu. Set the units in points and click on the Landscape orientation. You can select CMYK or RGB color mode for working.
Click ok to create a new document with the settings you given

2. To draw the sunglass proportionally, we can use a reference image as shown above. This image helps us to draw lines and fill it with colors for later working with meshes. Don’t worry about the picture size. Use it as your reference image. If you need a high quality image of the same reference, click here to download it.

3. Once you have saved the above image, you can place it in Illustartor for drawing. So, to place this image, go to file menu and select Place and choose the image to place in your document. After placing the image for reference, you can easily resize it as you like. To resize the image, select the selection tool or press V. Then click on the image and use the corner points to resize it.

Tip: Also use Shift, Alt for while resizing for correct proportion and placing.

4. Start tracing over it with the pen tool. Select the pen tool from the toolbox or press P to select it. Click on the stroke color in the tool box. Or press X to cycle through fill color and stroke color. Once you clicked or selected the stroke color, click on the ‘none’ color button as shown in the above image. The next step is to set the fill color. So select a dark red color for it.

5. You can now start drawing with the Pen tool. Click and drag the with the Pen tool for bezire corners to help you the draw the curves.

Tip: If you have trouble with drawing fills without seeing the correct lines in the reference image, click on the ‘none’ color button in the tool box while drawing or selected the fill. You can later fill the line with color.

6. Use the pen tool to draw the second lens of the sunglass.

7. Start filling the frame with color.

8. When you have completed
the above step, we can move on to another part of the sunglass. Follow what you had done in the previous steps and make a filled black layer as shown.

10. While you are working with the Pen tool or anything in Illustrator, it is very helpful to see your work it outline mode for adjustments. To view your work with only lines as shown below, press Ctrl+Y. To return to the fill mode, you can again press Ctrl + Y.

11. The Mesh tool helps you to work on your fills with gradient. To start with mesh tool, select the mesh tool from the tool box. Or you can use U for the Mesh tool.

Tip: Keep in mind the following shortcuts. it is very useful while working with the mesh tool.

Mesh tool: U

Eye dropper tool: I

Warning: Never select a color when you select any fill. If you do so, the entire fill will be changed. Select color to be applied after selecting mesh points or after deselecting any fills.

After you selected the Mesh tool, select a light red color wich matches in the above picture gradient. Then move the Mesh tool pointer on the end of fill of the left part sunglass and click once. It is clearly indicated in the below picture with a red circle. Do the same for the right part of the sunglass indicated with red circle.

If you have trouble or made a mistake, just use the direct selection tool to select the meshes part by part. When you selected a part of the mesh, you can press delete key in the keyboard to delete it.

12. After you have completed it, deselect all layers by pressing Ctrl+Shft+A. We will countinue on creating the mesh for the black frame. Select a grey color and use the Mesh too and just make one or two click on the parts of the sunglass to get the effect as shown below. Don’t make many clicks. You can undo any mistakes you made by pressing Ctl+Z.

It is not easy to manage the mesh points but it is easy to click on a specific place with clear view of color spreading.

Tip: If you having trouble with the reference image, just lock it. To lock the image, press Ctrl+2. You can unlock all by pressing Ctrl+Alt+2.

13. The next step is to add some gradient effect on the black frame of the sunglass. To add the gradient effect, select grey color from the color picker as fill color. With the mesh tool, you can add the effect. So, choosing the wrong place for your mesh points on the frame may not give you the correct effect. This how our frame looks like before adding the gradient effect is as follows.

14. The red circle indicates the position where you can use the Mesh Tool to apply the gradient effect. So with the Mesh tool with grey color selected from the color picker, click on the black frame of the sunglass indicated with red circle. You may get one of the effect as shown below by clicking with the Mesh tool.

15. Now we want to add some shadow details to the frame. So use the Pen tool to draw a shape as shown in the below picture. After drawing the shape, fill it with black color. Place it as shown below.

16. You can use the same technique to the bottom left part of the frame. You only need one click with the Mesh tool to make the effect as shown below. In the next step, you can add some reflections on the lenses of the sunglass.

17. To do as shown below, with the Mesh tool selected, but no layers or fills selected (If selected, deselect all). In the above picture,

Step 1: Picture shows the current status of the lens fill.

Step 2: Use Mesh tool. Select white color from the color picker and apply it as shown in the picture.

Step 3: Use Mesh tool. Select white color from the color picker and apply it as shown in the picture.

18. This is a sample gradient mesh used in this tutorial for making the sunglass. See a sample work made with this technique within few minutes.

19. Now to modify the effect, select white color and click once in the top of the lens layer fill. To make the realistic effect which shows many lights reflection, add one more click on the layer.

Tip: You can also set the color of the mesh parts color by selecting points of meshes with the Mesh tool.

20. See how it works on the glass and its frame.

21. The next step is to add some transparent effect of the sunglass. Actually you don’t need to make any transparent layer. But to create the transparency effect, we can add a dark color to the sunglass as shown above. Which plays the role of the back parts of the entire sunglass. Adding some reflective touches will be more attractive. So, use the Mesh tool to add some gradient effect.

22. The below picture will show you how to add highlights to make it more realistic. It is quite simple. These highlights are newly created with the Pen tool. So, use the Pen tool to draw these addition layers on top of your sunglass. After drawing the new reflection layers as shown in the picture, fill it with white color and go to Window menu and select Transparency palette to enable it. Use the sliding bar to reduce the transparency.

See the sample below that shows the making of a window’s highlight on the ball. Here, the window is a new layer made with Pen tool and placed on the ball with low transparency.

23. The same technique is used in our work as shown below.

24. Our sunglass is almost done. Add some more highlights and details to complete it.

Drawing the Background

25. Select Rectangle tool. Use M as shortcut. Draw a rectangle. Click and drag with the Rectangle tool.

26. We will use the Mesh tool to create a nice gradient mesh. Select white color and click on the rectangle filled layer as shown below.

27. Add a few more gradient points as shown.

28. Add more effects to make the sunglass more attractive. You can add shadows with the same technique. This is what I have done.

29. We made it! Here is the final illustration of our vector sunglasses done in Illustrator.

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