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I'm not the first person to paint a Predator style helmet by any stretch of the imagination but there are so many about that I wanted to take a lot of time on this one and get the texture as rich as possible.

The artwork is inspired by the alien warrior from the well known Predator films.

As Brian the owner normally drives a fire engine around, there's no not-quite-legal dark visor on this helmet, but the clear visor actually helps show off the artwork nicely so we were both very happy with the overall effect.

The helmet is a Simpson Bandit, with a nice large chin area so the Predator's facial features would fit nicely on. With all monster designs such as this, Simpsons or Crafts are the best because of the larger chin sections. If you try and paint a similar design onto a standard full face helmet that area is so small you end up cramming the detail in and it doesn't look right.

Starting with the mouth area I built up the detail from the back forward. I used hand-held masks for the markings on the skin. the rest of the skin texture was freehand airbrushed. A light Organic Green candy was airbrushed over some of the skin to give it a bit of a green glow.

Once the jaws and top of the head were completed, I masked off and airbrushed the dreadlocks around the back of the head. On some Predator helmets the dreadlocks are made really short so they'll fit onto the helmet completely but after thinking about it I decided that wouldn't work so I made them the correct length so they'd go off the bottom edge. When I stood back and had a look that looked a lot better.

The final features to go on were the dreadlock clips - two on each dreadlock. I masked up the area and cut out the silhouette of each clip before freehand airbrushing the detail on.

The helmet was given several coats of clear before Brian came to collect the completed item. This helmet should be seen around the Whitby area of North Yorkshire for anyone who rides out that way.

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