A Queenstown artist has stopped her national mural tour in Dunedin to raise awareness about the environment.
Artist Tess Sheerin primed an exterior wall on Aurora Energy's Andersons Bay substation on Tuesday and has been creating a mural since.
The mural would be about 12m by 6m and she hoped it would be finished on Sunday.
It would feature a crested penguin, its stomach open like a bin with rubbish "spewing out''.
She wanted the design to make people think twice about water pollution and how it harmed wildlife.
"We are hurting these beautiful animals,'' Sheerin said.
She was painting murals as part of a national tour to highlight pollution issues.
The first mural she painted on her "New Zealand's Worth Loving'' tour was in Queenstown last year, and called Drainbow Trout, featuring a rainbow trout and a drain.
The mural tour would stop in Christchurch and Wellington, and end in Auckland.
Each mural would feature a different ocean species and highlight an environmental issue.
"I believe that by painting these large-scale murals around Aotearoa we will be able to engage with a variety of people that normally wouldn't think twice about the environment.''
● As part of the tour, volunteers can collect rubbish from the shoreline of Otago Harbour. Meet at the Harbour Mouth Molars sculpture at 10am tomorrow.
