When a basketball court turned into a canvass for a giant portrait of Messi

At 9 metres wide and 10.80 metres long, the portrait made of chart sheets and five different paints – black, blue, red, orange, and yellow- spread across 1,045 sq.ft.

It’s never easy to pin down Lionel Messi on a football turf.

Neither was it easy for Ajay V. John, a 20-year-old from Muvattupuzha to pin down a giant portrait of his idol on the basketball court of his alma mater Nirmala College in Muvattupuzha early this month.

It wasn’t no ordinary portrait either. At 9 metres wide and 10.80 metres long, the portrait made of chart sheets and five different paints – black, blue, red, orange, and yellow- spread across 1,045 sq.ft. The portrait comes alive when viewed from a height.

The initial idea to create a mosaic portrait using Rubik’s Cubes was dropped owing to cost considerations. “The picture has been created using 280 chart sheets with four sheets combined together to make 70 big sheets. Then 1.18 lakh squares of 3cm were drawn on those sheets with each square marked with the colour to be filled it with. Then they were painstakingly filled with corresponding colours thus bringing alive the portrait square by square in almost a year,” said Mr. Ajay who is now doing an accounting course but wants to turn full time into art in the future.

Originally, the plan was to release the portrait on June 24 coinciding with the birthday of the football wizard. But the solo effort carried out mostly during his free time was too much to meet that deadline. Thus, it was decided to release it just ahead of the World Cup in Qatar.

It wasn’t an easy task for Mr. Ajay and his three friends when eventually it was released on November 2. “We started arranging the chart sheets around 9.30 a.m. and thrice they were blown away by wind. We decided to stick them to the court the fourth time and it was 2.30 p.m. when it was finally completed. But the response I received made the effort worth it. The college also supported by arranging drones to take pictures and videos,” he said.

Mr. Ajay now plans to exhibit it in as many places as possible as World Cup frenzy hits feverish pitch. It will be exhibited in Thrissur on Monday.