Nandan Nair

Brazil vs Argentina was my first ever soccer painting. The main theme of this painting was to bring Lionel Messi and Neymar Da Silva Santos Jr., two of the greatest soccer players (in my opinion) of the current time together.

A common match-up in the Confederations Cup is Brazil vs Argentina, and Brazil usually wins. In the most recent match, Brazil beat Argentina 4-0, all goals scored by Neymar and Messi missed a penalty! No offense, Messi!

In this painting, Neymar is in the middle of doing a rainbow flick (a trick where the ball goes from one leg to the other, and go’s over the same player), and Messi is jumping in the air and raising his foot to get a long/high pass from another player. I looked at pictures with them doing their best tricks, although they both were in their club (F. C. Barcelona) uniforms, and I wanted to do their national uniform. In the background, are Brazil and Argentina’s flags, so that one would know who plays for which country. I also made their team symbols, an important element in the painting. For me, the biggest challenge was making sure that both of them were exactly proportional to their natural sizes. Since you usually do not get both of them in the same picture, it was even more difficult. I tried to run videos in slow motion so that I get the exact styles of both these players doing the rainbow flick and high-cross receiver.

There are several important reasons that I decided to make Messi and Neymar in this painting. First of all, soccer is one of my favorite sports and these two players are just simply amazing superstars. They have great dribbling skills, awesome heading skills, and unbelievable shooting skills. If any of you don’t believe they are brilliant (which I highly doubt), I have put the links to YouTube videos of them making amazing goals in the 2014 World Cup Brazil. Please do watch these videos!

Messi 2014 WC Goals: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SXfZsB716u8
Neymar Jr. 2014 WC Goals: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WDvMZL-4m2w

Thank you for reading, and hope you enjoyed it!

You can also see all the pictures of this painting on my Flickr Photos Page.

You can also see the video of me painting this picture on my YouTube channel.