I sketched this out as I was talking to the client at his office. I used a blue editing pencil then went over it with a regular No. 2 pencil.

The client hand liked the image with the lifesaver on the other side. I scanned it and did a horizontal flip of the image in Adobe Photoshop. Since this project was going to eventually be printed (CMYK), I took the design in Adobe Illustrator. I then redrew the lifesaver, the watch, and the surrounding water ripples as seperate vector paths. I also had to re-type "validation" and the watch face numbers. Using the Illustrator ellipse tool made redrawing effortless and proportionally more accurate. It was merely the task of angling and using the pathfinder tool.

Here I added the base colors.

I made simple drop shadows and highlights then used simple gradients to create a metalic effect for the watch. I added shade to the lifesaver and made the water ripple dark blue.

Here I created a water surface by drawing an elliptical path around the watch and cutting along the edge of the top but going over the watch's mid section, making it partially submerged.

For the finishing touches, I added an outward circular gradient (from light to dark) as the background. It matches the color of the ellipse encompassing the watch creating a spotlight-on-the-water effect. I added bubbles to enhance the effect of "drowning." Lastly, I added the title with a black drop shadow for better visibility.