One of my other interests is vintage watches. I am attracted to these little examples of miniature engineering and design that once were essential tools, but have since lost quite a lot of their utility due to other technology such as phones. I began collecting chinese watches and then branched into old japanese and swiss (together with the occasional modern buy). I found a lot of vintage watches that had seen better days, especially with the watch dials degrading over time. In these situations you have 3 options. 1. Leave them in their original condition, 2. restore them, or 3. paint them... and the examples below are where i have taken option 3.

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With all of these, i've chosen to take an approach where i just paint directly onto the dial, leaving all the other parts in place (i.e. without removing the indeces etc.) and have tried to integrate the design into the dial somehow so that it feels like a part of the dial rather than a separate work. I'm also attempting to keep as much of the vintage character as possible visible, just masking some of the more unsightly degradation. The main challenge is how to do something in such a small space and at such a small scale. Most are less than 30mm across and usually have lots of other obstacles to deal with.