A Whanganui artist says her new mural won't be finished before Christmas after it was defaced over the weekend.
Michelle Sigley, known as The Flawsome Artist, discovered the graffiti on her Taupo Quay mural on Sunday morning.
She is about halfway through the project, with this setback likely to push back the mural's completion by a month.
"The tui was finished and the whale was finished and that took me forever. Just the amount of work and money I have put into this," she said.
Sigley has spent the last four weeks working on the mural on the riverside of the Crazy Pumpkin vegetable shop.