His illustrative brushwork adorns more than 60 Dunedin bus shelters and soon John Noakes' portrait will decorate another.
The late Broad Bay artist, who spent 15 years painting murals on bus shelters, is being immortalised on the first one he took a palette and paintbrush to, at Company Bay 24 years ago.
Dunedin artist Daniel Mead has been commissioned by Keep Dunedin Beautiful to paint Mr Noakes' portrait on the bus shelter as part of a wider beautification project.
The work will be officially unveiled on Sunday at 3.45pm, in conjunction with the launch of this year's Paint New Zealand Beautiful week, which aims to free communities of graffiti.
It was such vandalism which initially prompted Mr Noakes to brighten Dunedin's bus shelters, when on a rainy evening in 1987 he saw a group of children huddled in a dark, graffiti-covered shelter and decided to make the structures more appealing.
Over the following 15 years, he decorated 65 shelters, often with images from his favourite themes of space exploration and sport.
Mr Noakes died in 2006 aged 67, and since then various grants have paid for restoration work on some of his murals.
Mr Mead said the hardest part of painting Mr Noakes' portrait would be capturing his character in the image.
He will work from a photograph and hopes to complete the portrait in a single day, weather permitting.
Mr Mead, who said he admired Mr Noakes' work, will use exterior acrylic paint on the shelter.
He has already begun re-creating Mr Noakes' original work from 1987 on other parts of the structure.
"I really like what he did," Mr Mead said.
