Lily's Eyes Exhibit -New Perspectives-Fine Art Photography by Larry A Brechner

For the Munster Theatre Company 2014 musical production of The Secret Garden, a major visual element was creating a a portrait simulating a painting of the character, Lily. In the story, Lily died in child birth but appears as a "dreamer," and her portrait is covered by her grieving husband, Archibald. It is finally revealed by her ten-year-old son. A pivotal song in the show, "Lily's Eyes," along with the portrait are both important story elements.

This is a brief overview of the workflow in creating the final portrait.

Lily Original

In the rush of shooting the PR images, a separate photo of Lily alone was overlooked. With deadlines pending, I selected a suitable image for this purpose.

This original RAW publicity image was shot against chromakey background. This image was selected to created the "Lily's Eyes" portrait

Lily fliipped-make-up

Basic RAW conversion into Photoshop for editing.

A layer selection was made of Lily from the background.

The image was tilted (rotated) to have a more natural upright position.

The hidden hand was restored by making a copy of the left hand. Because it was going to probably be cropped out, not much attention was paid to the "wrong hand" issue.

Basic "make-up" was added and general enhancement of the basic image.

Lily layer

The image was flipped horizontally because it was going to appear on stage right (audience left) looking toward the main stage.

The face was processed to create a more "painting" style appearance, and a special emphasis was made to the eyes so they would stand out on stage.

Lily Red BG

Next a red digital drape background was added to further add to the painted portrait appearance.

Lily Final

The final image was further processed adding brush stroke effects, then cropped to create a 16x20" sized image. A signature line was also added.

Finally, it was printed on canvas to achieve the final result and set in an ornate frame.