'Whatever I can paint on, I'll paint on'
Ely Yerian, 23, of Columbia Falls, detailing at truck at OHS Body Shop in Columbia Falls. Yerian is adding flames to the hood and the body near the front wheels.
Ely Yerian, 23, of Columbia Falls works on the Home of the Chiefs mural on Wednesday at Helena Flats School. Yerian, a former student, began the project on a volunteer basis, an anonymous benefactor liked the work to the extent that it became a paying job for Yerian and was expanded to two murals.
Ely Yerian, 23, of Columbia Falls works on the Home of the Chiefs mural on Wednesday at Helena Flats School. Yerian, a former student, began the project on a volunteer basis, an anonymous benefactor liked the work to the extent that it became a paying job for Yerian and was expanded to two murals.
Detail of a skull and flame Ely Yerian painted on the gas tank of a motorcycle.
Ely Yerian, 23, of Columbia Falls, with two of the vehicles he has painted on Monday at his home in Columbia Falls.
Ely Yerian's first foray into the art of airbrushing was a bit of a fiasco.
He long had been enamored of magazine photos of airbrushed cars and, at 10 years old, was ready to try it himself. His mother bought him an airbrush gun - "a $25 yard sale gun" - and Yerian went to work.
His parents worked on hot rods, so Yerian had a ready supply of palettes to paint on. He took a hood from one of the cars and attempted to paint flames on it.
It didn't go well, said Yerian, now 23. Discouraged by how difficult airbrushing was, he gave it up entirely.
A few years later, when Yerian was in high school, he got the itch to try airbrushing again. His mom bought him a better-quality gun and Yerian went to work. But despite gaining a few years' experience in other artistic mediums - and despite watching artists make airbrushing look easy as they painted vehicles on TV - he still wasn't a natural.
"I still wasn't into it, because it was so hard," Yerian said.
He might have given up on it forever if not for his then-girlfriend Brittany Birky, who wanted Yerian to airbrush something onto her cap for graduation. She liked motocross, Yerian said, so he planned to paint a Fox Racing logo on the mortarboard.
But he knew he had better practice before he tried embellishing the cap. Paper towels provided a cheap canvas that was about the right size.
"I did rolls and rolls before I was going to ruin my wife's graduation cap," said Yerian, who married Birky less than a year ago.
His practice paid off, he said. "It turned out really good."
He was encouraged by his success and continued to practice his skills. After "trial and error - a lot of error," Yerian soon began selling airbrushed T-shirts.
"I ruined a lot of paper towels and T-shirts till I got good enough," he said.
He visited his uncle, an airbrush artist in Kennewick, Wash., and saw the work his uncle was doing on vehicles. After learning that his uncle had made $10,000 in one week airbrushing a Camaro, Yerian decided to get out of the T-shirt business.
"That right there really made me switch and get away from selling $20 T-shirts that took me five hours to paint," he said.
His parents were the first to trust him with their vehicles; they wanted flaming skulls painted on their motorcycles.
"They turned out amazing," said Yerian, who took the bikes to car shows and drummed up more business.
Except for a couple of airbrushing classes he took in Las Vegas, Yerian is entirely self-taught. He had considered going to art school, but his uncle and others talked him out of it.
"Everybody told me not to and just learn myself," he said.
Yerian said he did pick up some good pointers from the classes in Vegas and earned some certificates from them, "so people can see I'm not just kind of winging it," he said.
In the four years he has been painting, Yerian has expanded his repertoire to include more than fabric and metal. He airbrushed bamboo and red-eyed tree frogs onto green walls in one customer's house. He painted an Escalade on a wall at Empire Rides in Kalispell.
His 6-month-old daughter's room is an undersea paradise, with ocean blue walls and characters from Disney's "Finding Nemo" on the walls. Copyright laws would prevent him from painting those characters on any walls outside his own home, he said.
He recently finished two murals at Helena Flats School. Yerian works with Helena Flats school board trustee Denis Johnson at Les Schwab in Columbia Falls.
"He's seen tons of my work," Yerian said.
He said Johnson gave his phone number to Principal Ann Minckler, who contacted him about painting the school's mascot, the Chiefs, on the walls. Yerian ended up painting two murals at the school, one by the main office and one in the middle school wing.
He estimates it took about 15 hours to finish the two murals. He worked his regular nine-hour shift at the tire store, and then would spend several hours painting at the school.
That's normal, Yerian said. "Every single one of my days off, I'm painting."
He hopes that one day airbrushing will be a full-time business. His wife would like if he could work from home, Yerian said.
In the meantime, he'll keep painting whatever he can, wherever he can.
"Whatever I can paint on, I'll paint on," he said.
Yerian may be reached at 212-8957.
Reporter Kristi Albertson may be reached at 758-4438 or at kalbertson@dailyinterlake.com.