Artist Creates Fascinating Drawings Using Typewriters

Most people would probably say that typewriters are a thing of the past but for James Cook, they are the main tool for creating unique and intricate pieces of art.

This UK-based artist is creating beautiful black and white portraits and landscapes by arranging punctuation marks, numbers, and letters and typing them on a piece of paper.

“There is something fascinating about using the 43 keys of a typewriter and using the various shapes of the punctuation, letters, and numbers to arrange and configure onto a piece of paper to create a desired shape or type of shading,” the artist told My Modern Met.

Cook explained that his work is inspired by an American typewriter artist, Paul Smith, who suffered from cerebral palsy but was still able to create beautiful art using typewriters.

Over the years, Cook created almost 100 pieces of art using 30 different typewriters from his collection—some of them made in the 1950s. However, one of his greatest accomplishments happened recently when he finished working on the largest typewriter drawing ever created. It was a commissioned piece, made up of more than 100,000 symbols and is around 4 feet x 3 feet big.

Check out Cook’s artwork in the photos below.

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