KARNS CITY — You can see Mark Swartzlander's art of cars.

Or, you can see Swartzlander's art on cars.

The 34-year-old Karns City resident has had a lifelong passion for art on wheels.

As owner, operator and sole employee of East Coast Airbrush, he has customized hundreds of autos and cycles: Murals, portraits, custom lettering, flames, "your zigs, your zags and your checkered flags," he said.

And, when not doing that, Swartzlander visits up to 30 car shows a year creating and selling vehicle portraits, sometimes of the cars he airbrushed.

Swartzlander said he started drawing in grade school by tracing and copying images from his father's car magazines.

Over the years, art teachers urged him to expand his repertoire, and he's been known to do the occasional personal portrait or tattoo art from time to time.

But Swartzlander said there's nothing like seeing his art drive down the street.

"My family was always into cars, so I grew up around that," he said.

Swartzlander began air brushing vehicles while a ninth grader at Karns City High School.

"My artwork is on 100 to 200 cars and probably the same amount of bikes," he said.

Most of his work is done freehand, but he does sketch it on the vehicles first.

"Some people know exactly what they want; others will let me work with it," he said.

The most memorable airbrush project for Swartzlander was a 1949 Ford custom "lead sled."

"I gave it a flame job from one end of the car to the other, front-to-back."

But lately, the "real fire" or "true fire" look is what's most requested, he said.

Swartzlander said he often upgrades his equipment and takes classes in new techniques.

"You are constantly battling yourself to become better," he said.

Swartzlander, whose day job is doing body work for a shop in Eau Claire, spends many of his weekends at car shows and cruises armed with a black Sharpie marker.

He sketches up to eight renderings per show, and "the car owners donate whatever they feel it is worth."

And what's on his own vehicles?

Swartzlander has his "work truck," which is a 1970 Dodge pickup, painted like a "drag racing truck from back in the day," he said.

His '76 Dodge Dart Swinger is painted in candy colors and "lace painting."

And on his 1971 Triumph Bonneville, Swartzlander replicated a pin-up girl who had been on the nose of "Booby Trap," the B-26 bomber his grandfather, a military mechanic, was dedicated to in World War II.

But Swartzlander said his grandfather, Joe Jackson, never saw the familiar, busty brunette on his bike.

Jackson died before Swartzlander did the work last year, but he thinks it would get his grandfather's approval. "I grew up in a family of car nuts ..." he said, "It's in my blood."