[PHOTOS] Draws pictures and effects… with typewriters!

Only the flick of the keys breaks the silence in the office of James Cook, who produces drawings with unsettling precision…with a typewriter.

From American actor Tom Hanks to the London Eye, the British capital’s famous Ferris wheel, James Cook, 25, composes real works of art using letters and symbols from his device.

The young man began drawing in this way in 2014, after discovering in high school the work of an artist from the 1920s who used a similar method.

Then he decides to try on his own what seems “impossible” to him.

“Out of curiosity, I decided to go buy my own typewriter,” he told AFP from his studio in London.

“Since then, I learned to draw little by little,” he adds.

At first, the young artist reproduced buildings, which he thought were easier to draw due to straight lines and left-to-right movement of the machine.

“I couldn’t draw faces before I started writing a typewriter,” he says. “In fact, I probably draw faces now better with a typewriter than if I had a pencil,” smiles the person who studies engineering now.

Building on his success on social networks with his 20,000 Instagram subscribers, he continues to draw and gives a second life to the typewriters given to him by some fans.

“always a challenge”

James Cook can paint anywhere, in the shadow of the London Eye or on the banks of the Thames next to the British Parliament. Under a big blue sky, he painted that day using the “@” sign, the numbers or the letters “W” and “P”.

For portraits, he uses brackets to reproduce the shape of the eyes while for skin he uses the mark that “covers a large area.”

While writing meticulously on his device, he quickly attracts the attention of onlookers.

“Before the invention of Microsoft Word and all that remains, this is what we used to write letters to,” said David Asante, a computer engineer at the hospital. “His ability to turn this into a work of art is impressive.”

James Cook can take four to five days to draw small illustrations, but the pictures are much more boring, explains the young man who finds it “really satisfying” to work with a “limited” tool.

“It will never get easier,” he says. “It is always a challenge.”

The artist will be exhibiting this summer in England and hopes to enter the Guinness Book of Records for Largest Typewriter Drawing.