This story originally appeared in Esquire's 'About Time' newsletter, style director Johnny Davis’s straight-talking take on the wonderful world of watches. Sign up here.
Bryan Braddy has always been a watch guy.
A Nike Air Colour Change Mood Dial quartz watch at school soon gave way to a collection that today includes Rolex, Omega, Breitling and Seiko – the good stuff, basically.
So, when Braddy’s four-year-old daughter invited him to sit down at the kitchen table and draw whatever came into his mind, it wasn’t Peppa Pig. The resulting crayon-and-Sharpie sketch of a Rolex Explorer II somehow kick-started a new business venture.
Three years later Braddy, known to Instagram as @badartnicewatch, has produced more than 400 charmingly wonky watercolours of Cartiers, Omegas, Pateks and Vacheron Constantins, and been commissioned to do the same by brands including Nixon, Studio Underd0g and March Hare Watches.
He has a six-week lead time and is open for commissions.
“I won’t turn anyone down!” Braddy says.
In fact, @badartnicewatch joins a clutch of watch-art-on-the-‘Gram creators, who vary in style from the impressionist @sunflowerman to the mind-bogglingly detailed @inkdial to the wry paper artist @labeg to the retro watch ad obsessed @adpatina.
“Watches are expensive,” Braddy says, of the watch drawing community, many of whom he now counts as friends. “And when you can’t afford something but you still long for it, sometimes you collect around the peripheral. And that scratches that itch for a little bit.”
There might be a deeper meaning, too.
“A lot of the commissions I get, I ask ‘Is there a specific date or time you want on this watch?’ People will have the date of their wedding, or when their first child was born. Or it could be ‘Hey, could you highlight this scratch? I got this when I was diving off the coast of Ecuador.'
So, it’s really trying to capture their specific watch and the story that’s associated with it. It’s not just a piece of art.”
By day Braddy is a “technical trainer within the marketing space”. He only “picks up the watercolours at night”.
“Man,” he says. “I wish this was my day job.”
Over time, Braddy has got pretty adept at the intricacies of dials, hands and bezels – even skeletonised movements.
So much so that the Bad Art Nice Watch moniker now seems a bit of a misnomer.
“A lot of friends have said that,” he says. “I joke that I should be calling it ‘Meh Art Nice Watch’.”
This story originally appeared in Esquire's 'About Time' newsletter, style director Johnny Davis’s straight-talking take on the wonderful world of watches. Sign up here.
