I am aware of issues MC-107930 and MC-92324 (the first being a possible duplicate of the latter) and noticed the similarities, but I still believe this issue is a bit different. Obviously you should be the judge of that.

When switching from Creative to Spectator and back your arm remains invisible, and when looking at the survival inventory screen your preview window also remains black. However, this only happens when there are also other players logged onto the server.

Note: I reproduced this by logging onto my test server using 2 clients and 2 (different) accounts from the same computer.

After logging in the first account has OP (op level 3) and is in Creative. The other account uses either survival or adventure mode. Pressing F3-n to switch to spectator, and then again to switch back will render the arm on the admins client invisible, as well as his image in the preview window (survival inventory). However... He is perfectly visible by the other client (his character itself isn't invisible).

2016-10-16_01.46.53: Shows the invisible preview area, also shows (background) the mode switching.

2016-10-16_01.46.56: Shows my invisible arm, and other the players presence.

2016-10-16_01.46.59: Shows myself as seen from the other players client.