Here’s something special. Falling under the fixed price OMAKASE banner, this is representative of a time and product investment which far surpasses the retail cost of the finish; this is the kind of thing you can get when you hand over creative freedom! Thanks to Bespoke for bringing this one in.

The aurora borealis has been fascinating people since its discovery and will continue to do so forever. Often, people ask for some kind of tribute or representation of its shimmering colours and there are a couple of standard approaches to recreating it with airbrushes. Avoiding those common standards, we approached this OMAKASE project a little differently.

After the usual prep/prime/prep frame readiness, we took a whole host of blues and purples and greens and pinks and dusted them - somewhat randomly - all over the bike, in gentle fades and soft overlaps, then we clear coated it as if it were “finished”. After a cure, the whole thing was then completely painted over in house favourite ‘Galaxy Black’. All of those vibrant colours were now hidden. Next came the fun part… at first tentatively and later with a little more boldness, we simply used solvents to wipe away the black in key areas revealing those vibrant colours beneath… hopefully emulating the way these hues decorate the night sky in nature. The result is non-repeatable organically shaped, almost liquid “windows” into the colours beneath.

One more clear coat to seal that stage in place, another cure and then to make it even more involved, a whole host of fine line Norse constellations were airbrushed in place, giving some crisp deliberate shapes to contrast against the comparative chaos beneath.

The Specialized branding was painted back in place in a deep metallic blue which gets lost - and found - amongst the colour melee… and just to make it more involved, the driveside and non-driveside graphics have a different drop shadow! High polish gloss to finish as always. It was a shame to see this one leave!