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When I decided to embark on a custom paint job, I was not at all sure what I was getting into.  First of all, I was well versed in latex and oil-based house paint.  Body work and painting was just a far-off dream.  I had done some painting of my radiator shroud and rear fender with rattle-can paint from color-rite, however the paint was very susceptible to chipping.  Additionally I made the feauxpas of using a plastic primer with the color-rite urethane color and clear.  A no-no.  While the finish did not blister, the base coat did not stick, hence the chipping.  As I was deciding to do a custom paint job, I had come across the Airbrush Technique Forum and paying attention to a lot of extremely talented work.  I am not very talented in the area of art.  I knew I wasn't going to be doing any seascapes or "wolves in the snow" due to I don't have the raw talent.  I didn't want to do flames, but I was not sure what it was that I wanted to do, or more importantly, what I could pull-off.

So I bought an Iwata Eclipse air brush and compressor and I bought one of Don Johnson's starter kits from Airhead airbrush.com.  It came with a video showing basic masking techniques.  Another video came with the Iwata airbrush.  What these folks can do free-hand. Anyway, I started playing around with different designs and continued to look at what folks were doing and I decided to do some ghost tribal flames.  It was also clear that I was going to use the House of Kolor paint system.  My first project was a 1/2 helmet in candy red.  It turned out real nice, however I wanted something a little different for the bike.  I settled on a 50/50 mix of Cobalt Blue and Oriental Blue.  There were 7 pieces in all: 2 Fender, 2 Side Covers, a Gas Tank, the Radiator Shroud and Headlight Cowl.  I wanted to make them each different, but stay with a common theme.