The pictures that really are worth a thousand words

The pictures that really are worth a thousand words

By Daily Mail Reporter
Last updated at 12:34 PM on 16th January 2009

These incredible drawings are proof that some pictures really are worth a thousand words.

Keira Rathbone 'drew' the works of art using just a humble typewriter.

She has spent up to 90 hours hammering away at each picture using a variety of letters and punctuation marks thousands and thousands of times.


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Keira, 25, favours dashes and apostrophes when typing a building and views and brackets when creating a portraits.

Where most peoples' efforts would only produce a smiley face on the end of an email, Keira has typed detailed pictures of celebrities such as Tom Hanks and Kate Moss.

Keira uses her right index finger to bash out the letters while her left hand winds the paper up and down.

But rather than typing the entire outline from left to right, top to bottom like writing a letter, Keira concentrates on individual sections of the picture before moving on.


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She frantically types over the same area several times to create dark shading and uses just a few letters for the lighter patches.

Her most breathtaking works of art include a detailed picture of Bournemouth Pier in Dorset which took 90 hours of hard work.

The original copy of this picture has since sold to a fan for £500.

Keira, a university graduate in fine art, said: 'I had no intention of trying to draw with my typewriter when I bought it.

'But a few months later I decided to give it a go and now I have developed my own personal formula.


The artist at work: Keira Rathbone uses one hand to bash out the letters and the other to wind her paper up and down

'I mainly use a lot of dashes, colons, forward slashes and brackets and have done landscapes, plants and portraits.

'Some of my drawings are of celebrities but they have to have an interesting face for me to want to do it.'

Keira, from Poole, Dorset, discovered her talent after spotting a 1960s Silver Reed 100 typewriter for sale in a charity shop.

She paid just £5 for the orange machine but only intended to use it for her university essays while at the University of the West of England in Bristol.

But six months later, Keira discovered her talent for drawing with it.

She said: 'I spotted the typewriter in a charity shop and liked it because it looked really vintage.


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'It cost five pounds, which was a lot to me at the time, and although I didn't have a lot to write, I took a gamble on it.

'My first drawing was a very simple eye but I was very slow and my drawing was very basic and spaced out.

'I kept practising though and found myself getting quicker - now I can draw most things.

'If I'm trying to draw a building then I tend to use a lot of dashes and apostrophes for the structure.

'For portraits I use a lot of brackets and use a lot of shading by typing over the same piece again and again.'

Keira added: 'A lot of people think that I must draw my typewriter pictures up and down in lines but I literally do it as if it was a pencil and paper sketch.

'With a portrait for example, I will start with an eye and build it up before moving on to the next eye and then say, the lips.

'I build up the shading by going over the same section of paper a number of times. Surprisingly I only get through about one ink ribbon a year.

'I never sketch the picture with a pencil before I start though - it is all freehand.

Keira often types outdoors and attracts a lot of attention.

She added: 'It seems that anyone from children to the elderly are interested in what I do.

'I'm pleased to say that I've never had a negative response to my pictures and can sell them for anything up to £500.

'If I have been typing for more than an hour then I have to stop and have a break.

'It's not the tapping of the finger that aches but the arm that moves the paper.'

Keira has just launched an exhibition of her incredible work at the Grove Studio in Southbourne, Bournemouth.

Source: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1119242/The-pictures-really-worth-thousand-words.html