Typewriter art: sometimes a picture really is worth a thousand words

If you thought an old typewriter was just for producing letters on, think again – one artist is using ancient manual typrewriters to create astonishingly lifelike portraits of famous people.

Barack Obama, Marilyn Monroe and supermodel Kate Moss have all been captured in amazing detail.

Keira Rathbone hit on the idea of using manual typewriters – some 70 years old – as her paint brushes.

Working from her studio in Chiswick, London, and throughout the city, Keira turns the platen or roller to move the paper and selects different characters to make the shapes she wants. The 27-year-old artist from Dorset decides which of her 30 typewriters to use and creates faces and objects using numbers, letters and punctuation.

She said: ‘I love using a typewriter to draw. It’s an enjoyable process and a unique way of creating imagery. I often go around London and just sit there with a typewriter drawing what I can see or doing portraits.

‘People’s reaction is usually to say, ‘‘It’s amazing’’.’

Keira first got the idea to use a typewriter to make pictures while at university.

Over the last seven years she has ‘painted’ David Miliband, playwright Bonnie Greer and former Miss World Bollywood actress Aishwarya Rai.

She has created magazine covers and appeared at events and festivals. Some of her portraits can take up to three weeks to do.

Her work is on display at the Montcalm hotel near Marble Arch in the West End.