It began with more than 3,000 square feet of exposed red brick on the backside of a vacant commercial building off Market Street. Slabs jutted out from fused concrete at incongruent angles, no single smooth patch on the beast’s scales.

Gus Rey needed approximately 35 spray-paint cans of a particular shade of Bronco baby-blue, many more gallon-sized cans of paint than could squeeze into his car, and a scissor lift that swung him 25 feet in the sky.

He also needed a consistent handle on his sanity to successfully pull off his mural of Pat Surtain II.

“I knew it would kick my (butt),” Rey reflected last Saturday while gazing up at the wall in downtown Denver. “And it did.”

Rey, a laid-back local artist secretly commissioned by the Broncos a few months ago, painted a mural of Nikola Jokic

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