Long House WIP 5

After a few days rest from this while I was sorting out the frame for the NWWS exhibition painting it was good to be able to pick up the brushes again.

I've now finished the background of the long house. Missionaries who visited these long houses often wrote about how dark and smoky the interior of these dwellings were. I wanted to capture that smoky, dimly lit atmosphere so the painting is much darker and more smoky than my reference photo. These traditional buildings were windowless structures between 25 and 30 metres long and six to nine metres wide and high. They were made of poles bent over to form an arbour, which was then covered with bark and saplings. There were low doors at each end and holes in the roof which let smoke out and light in. There were usually three fires in each long house so they would often get extremely smoky. Indeed the smoke often caused eye disease among the old.

I think I am going to paint in the floor of the building next.

Ona