Paul Hemming makes a living out of turning the ordinary into the extraordinary. As a scenic painter he is responsible for bringing TV and film sets to life with realistic recreations of environments and everyday things, such as wood, walls, metal and stone.

It may sound mundane but is anything but. Throughot his career, which spans over 30 years, he has helped to create everything from Victorian terraces and luxury hotel interiors to spaceships and underground bunkers. 

When I catch up with Paul, who lives in Grenoside with his wife Kim, he’s currently dividing his time between home and Scotland, where he is working on the second season of the Netflix series, Dept Q, which stars Matthew Goode and Kelly MacDonald. It’s familiar territory to Paul, who worked on the first series, but all the sets have had to be recreated for this next instalment. At present he’s mainly working out of a warehouse in Leith but has also spent time on location in Aberdeen for specific parts of the shoot. 

Film sets are generally built out of wood and then scenic painters, such as Paul, are brought in to bring them to life. it’s not an easy task but is one he has spent decades perfecting.

Although Paul can’t reveal too much about the plot (if you haven’t seen it, it is a crime-thriller centred around a cold case unit), he does have plenty of pictures of the sets which are currently being put to use. There’s dirty tiled walks, rusted metal pipes and aged brick, which to the naked eye, look just like the real thing. And with the advances in technology, there’s no hiding place for substandard work. 

“High definition really brought things into focus, literally,” says Paul. “Everything has to be perfect.”

Growing up in Birmingham, and given the creative nature of his work, it’s perhaps surprising to discover that Paul didn’t even study art at school (he took history instead) but undertook an apprenticeship as a painter and decorator at Seven Trent Water Authority. It was there that he learned many of the basic painting techniques he now employs but expanded his craft further by taking a three-month temporary contract at the BBC in Britain’s second city. Such was the quality of his work, he was offered a permanent contract and stayed with the corporation for ten years. 

It was while at the BBC that Paul got his first taste of working on TV sets (Dangerfield and Dalziel and Pascoe for example) as well as new techniques such as graining and marbling, which is where he got his nickname ‘Splash’. 

“I was recreating a big marble floor so you use thinned down emulsion, meths and water and you flick all your different colours on,” explains Paul. “Someone walked past and said ‘you’re splashing that about a bit aren’t you?’ And it stuck. If you look at the credits of anything I’ve worked on, it’s always Paul ‘Splash’ Hemming.”

After taking redundancy from the BBC, Paul set himself up as a freelance scenic painter under the limited company, Scenic Colours.

Many of these formative years were spent in Manchester where he worked on series such as Cutting It (starring Sarah Parish and Amanda Holden), Queer as Folk (written by Russell T Davies) and Ideal (a comedy with Johnny Vegas). Paul also worked on the new Coronation Street set when it was built, helping to age it down.

Over the years Paul has forged strong relationships with Paul Ward, an on-set construction manager, and Grant Montgomery, a production designer, whom he has worked with on a regular basis. He’s currently working with them on Dept Q but has also worked with them on Last Breath, Beowulf, and most notably, Peaky Blinders, amongst others.

“When we did the first Peaky Blinders I went into Grant’s office and he had all these drawings in black ink on his wall,” Paul recalls. “When we finished doing the sets, including The Garrison and the betting office, they all looked exactly like those pictures.”

At that time, much of the series was filmed in Manchester and Liverpool as well as at the Black Country Living Museum, which doubled as the canal yard, with extra furnaces built by the set designers and painted by Paul, who later returned to work on the recent Netflix film.

“The writer, Steven Knight, is a Brummie so as soon as he heard my accent he came over and said ‘are you a Bluenose or a Villa?’ I said ‘I’m a Villa’ but that didn’t seem to put him off!” recalls Paul as he talks fondly about his time on set.

Speaking about other projects, Paul admits a preference for working on period projects (“they’re more interesting, you have more to do”) and recalls Tolkien, a biographical drama film about the writer’s life starring Nicholas Hoult and Lily Collins. Much of it was filmed in the north-west.

“It was a big production,” explains Paul. “We had to build trenches in Hale Barns and I had to make it look like bombs had gone off. That’s where my imagination comes in. We had a barrel of mud and threw it everywhere so it looked ‘blown up’. It worked.”

He also spoke about turning Bramham House in Leeds into Jamaica, Doncaster Racecourse into a German sports centre for a Bollywood film and building Jamaica Inn on the moors just outside Barnsley.

Many of the specialised techniques that Paul uses are self-taught and he can utilise anything and everything to create the desired effect.

“I tend to make my own stuff, we uses sponges, feathers, rip rollers to shreds,” he explains. “Sometimes we use glue, mastic, whatever creates the desired effect really. The important thing is in TV and film you’ve got to have quick ways, you just don’t have the time.”

With one eye on retirement, Paul is already looking at, and helping to nurture, the next generation of scenic painters. 

“There’s no formal training for this type of work so the youngsters we have on set are desperately trying to learn as much as they can,” explains Paul. 

So, if you’re a painter or decorator looking for something more exciting…

Looking back over his career, Paul has enjoyed some fabulous experiences, completed  some outstanding projects and worked with many well-known names. Scenic painters are a vital cog in the TV and film production machine, adding not just authenticity but real art to any project, and should be celebrated.

“I was working on Waterloo Road and [the actor] Adam Thomas called me ‘Splash the Legend’, that’s good enough for me,” laughs Paul, who’s happy to stay under the radar but clearly loves what he does.