Airbrushing motorcycle helmets is an art form and a skill. Like any skill, you can practice and practice and practice some more and eventually you will get better. As long as you are practicing the right techniques and learning the right airbrushing strategies. We are going to take a look at a common question in this article: How do you paint a motorcycle helmet visor and still see through it?
The Tint Trick
Daniel Nätterdal is painting a skull theme on the helmet in this video above. About half way through you can see him prepping the finish design for a clear coat. He scratches the surface with a fine pad so that the clear will have good adhesion. What you don’t see when the video skips from painting to prepping, is where the eyes of the visor are taped off. It’s a tinted visor that he started painting on.
The dark area that makes up the eye holes on the visor do not have any paint on them at all. Pretty clever.
You can also use this trick with a mirrored visor or a color tinted visor.
Once you see it, it kind of makes sense to do it that way doesn’t it? Compared to the next technique, I think that it provides the best visibility with a unique motorcycle helmet design.
The Sticker
The sticker technique is a bit more transparent. You can purchase a sticker that has a design on it already or you can buy a screen and attached it to you helmet visor before you paint it. When you are done painting, removing the screen will remove a bunch of very small circles that you are able to see through. This is called “Helmet Visor Screening.” So when you ask a professional airbrush artist to paint your helmet, as him/her how many visors they have painted.
Here are a couple of helmet visor stickers that can spruce up just about any old plain helmet.