With the high cost of dials or movements with dials, I’ve been drawing up some of my own clock dials. Not only is this much cheaper, it also gives you flexibility as to design and size. The one I’ve been working on today is a flowery Arabic dial. After going through this, it’s really not as hard as it first seems. You spend most of the time drawing the initial design, and then just repeat it every 30 degrees. By using the guides in Coreldraw and grouping the image with a outside circle, it becomes an almost trivial cut-and-paste.
I’ve attached a link to the dial here. Note that it’s still unfinished; I want to do something with the center, and the circles/numbers need to be larger.
Here’s a low-res picture of the dial. The actual flower/leaves are much finer.
Fancy Arabic Clock Dial
3 responses so far ↓
1 Momcat // Feb 9, 2010 at 11:57 pm
Very pretty, David.
2 pedrofret // Feb 14, 2010 at 6:35 am
Excellent work. Very fine and subtle. What kind of printer and paper do you use to make it look good? Of course standard paper is not good for that.
3 kofte // Feb 14, 2010 at 9:06 am
Pedro, my best color printer right now is an ancient Konica Magicolor 2300. That was one of the last printers made before the manufacturers started cheapening the quality. The printer is heavy and seems to print forever on a single toner cartridge. I’m sure there are better printers, but finding one that performs well for under US$1000 is hard. (The magicolor cost me $250 when bought it around 2003–it included full cartridges, not “starter cartridges”. I bought a second one for a second set of cartridges.) For black&white versions I’ve used Jenny’s Samsung SCX-4826 printer/scanner/fax just because it was there. I’d think most modern B&W printers that have a decent resolution (1200dpi) and clean print would do fine.
I’m still playing around with paper. I use a heavier (26lb+) and bright white paper (Over 100 on the brightness) for the white backgrounds. On the cat clock I used a 65lb simulated parchment paper. As long as you keep away from the cheap, copier-type paper, it should work fine. (All the numbers I used are US numbers; not sure what the European equivalents are. I do know the Euro whiteness # is much higher than the equivalent US brightness #.)
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