HAYES TWP. — By his own admission, airbrush artist Bernie Gapinski was a less than stellar art student during his days in high school.

“I did really bad in art class,” said the Gaylord native who, since those days, has spent hundreds of hours in his workshop airbrushing almost anything anyone puts in front of him — motorcycles, helmets, cars, guitars, signs and even an interior door at the Alpine Chocolat Haus.

Despite his not making the grade in art class, Gapinski said he has always loved to paint and draw, and when he purchased a cheap airbrush to paint his car in 1983, the start of a 25-year-old hobby was born.

“A couple of friends asked me to paint their cars and it just kind of grew from there,” Gapinski said of “The Custom Brush,” the business name he adopted when he displayed his work at last year’s “Art on Wheels,” an exhibit of custom-built motorcycles and airbrushed artwork April 12-13 at the Treetops Convention Center.

“I do a lot of bikes and helmets; some cars, but not so many these days,” Gapinski said of his artwork, which can be seen riding down roadways rather than hanging in hallways.

“This is mainly a hobby for me. I get most of my work through word of mouth from the customers who have been happy with my work. There’s not a lot of money in it. The materials are expensive and it takes about a 100 hours just to paint a gas tank and bike fenders,” Gapinski said. “I enjoy the recognition when someone tells me I did a good job.”

Gapinski said he gets a lot of requests for skulls and flames on the bikes and helmets he paints for his customers. “I don’t know if it’s my specialty or just what people like, but I’ll paint whatever anyone wants.”

To date, Gapinski said he has custom-painted 25 bikes and 21 bike helmets and while the work on a motorcycle can easily take up the better part of 100 hours, he can crank out a custom bike helmet in 10 to 15 hours.

He’s painted mermaids and the cartoon character Yosemite Sam with the drooping handlebar mustache for a couple in Johannesburg and a memorial helmet for a customer who was friends with Ryan Kehoe, the motorcyclist from Gaylord who was killed in a crash last year.

“Whatever they want, I’ll do my best. Once you get started on something it’s hard to quit,” Gapinski said of the time he spends inside his shop behind his Hayes Tower Road home.

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