Gas! Gas!

Apologies for not commenting or posting over the past two weeks. My father has been very ill in hospital and I've been separated from both camera and laptop. He's now waiting to be transferred to a different hospital and I've been re-united with my camera and laptop so will attempt some occasional blips.

While I've been staying in my father's bungalow I came across this linoprint in the attic. It was made by me at school in the early 1970's and is the only survivor from a series I did to illustrate lines from Wilfred Owen's 1917 poem Dulce et Decorum est. This one was for lines nine and ten: 

"Gas! Gas! Quick boys! - An ecstasy of fumbling,  
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time".  

This is a detail from the print which is quite large (A3).I was intrigued to see that I was experimenting even then - I've actually used the hessian backing of the lino block as a printing plate to provide the texture on the canvas masks. It might be interesting to see what I come up with if I try to illustrate the same lines now (45 years later).