There is something wrong with firing a 100-mile-per-hour slap shot at a piece of artwork strapped to another human being’s head.

Unless, of course, you play in the National Hockey League.

Goaltenders are a breed unto themselves, and so are the artists who paint the painstakingly detailed masks the goalies wear. More than 40 years after the Boston Bruins trainer John Forristall drew stitches on Gerry Cheevers’s stark white mask, the painting of goalie masks has become a specialized, highly competitive industry.

More than a dozen painters based in North America and Europe serve N.H.L. goaltenders, with dozens more handling minor league and amateur clients. Studios can be as state-of-the-art as David Gunnarsson’s converted barn in Smaland, Sweden, with an exhibition hall and a lounge, or as unpretentious as the garage in the Montreal suburb of Ste.-Marthe-sur-le-Lac, where Sylvie Marsolais collaborates with her partner, Alexandre Mathys.

“Whether people admit it or not, my job is really to give the goalie an identity,” said Ray Bishop, a well-regarded mask painter based in suburban Detroit. “Go back to the Felix Potvins and the Ed Belfour. You knew them by the paint jobs.”