Estonia's largest spray-painted mural has been completed after 2,000 hours on old factory walls in the Ülemiste City district of Tallinn and depicts a local legend.
The Old Man of Ülemiste is one of the best-known figures of Estonian folklore who, according to legend, lives in Lake Ülemiste and watches over the fate of Tallinn.
The Old Man rises from the lake from time to time and asks if the capital has been completed. If someone answers "yes," he floods the city. Therefore, the answer must always be no, and that there is still work to do.
The mural shows the Old Man sitting on a rock in the lake while working on a laptop. A plane flies above and animals can be seen around the water's edge. The painting is located next to the older mural depicting a girl holding a red umbrella.
The image was designed and painted by artist Silver "SBoy" Seeblum and sprayed onto a huge gray factory wall. It took more than 2,000 working hours, or just over half a year, to complete and approximately 3,000 liters of paint.
"When painting with spray cans, the most important thing is to do the upper sections first, because paint and dust fall downward. I spent a total of two months painting the background, and another month on the character, the stones and the box," he told ERR.
The image will also be visible to travelers flying in and out of Tallinn Airport, with the best view available to those taking off in the direction of Lake Ülemiste.
Covering nearly 5,000 square meters, the mural is the largest in Estonia, and Seeblum already has thoughts of setting a new European record.
"I can understand very well why such a large work has never been done in Estonia and has only been done once before in Europe. This work falls just a couple of hundred square meters short of Europe's largest. We still have room on the roof, so perhaps we'll do that section too," Seeblum said.
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