Artist who inks architecture and portraits on typewriter collabs with Robbie Williams and Mission: Impossible franchise

An artist who inks famous architecture and portraits using a typewriter has collaborated with Robbie Williams, the Mission: Impossible franchise and the Royal Albert Hall.

James Cook, 28, who lives in Braintree, Essex, discovered typewriter art – where letters, numbers and symbols are carefully typed on the page to create a picture – in 2014 while studying for his art A-level.

He went on to study architecture the following year and began taking commissions for his typewriter art in 2016 to help fund student life, but by 2020 his work had reached national audiences after being featured on television.

Since graduating in 2021, James has “never looked back”, becoming a full-time artist with more than 840,000 Instagram followers, thousands of artworks sold and even praise from Tom Hanks, who sent him a note and signed his own portrait.

Now owning more than 100 typewriters, with one even from Buckingham Palace, James continues to blend his love of architecture and artistry, producing pieces which range from depictions of Times Square in New York to Oxford’s Bodleian Library.

On average, each piece consists of at least 500,000 characters and takes around three weeks to complete, working full days from 9.30am to 6pm, which is around 200 hours in total.

One of his most “challenging” works is of New York, measuring 118cm by 84cm – it took him three months to complete and contains more than one million characters.

He has to take “regular breaks” as his fingers can get sore from the typing, and said he is “holding out hope” that he does not get repetitive strain injury (RSI) in the future.

Speaking about one of his “proudest moments”, James told PA Real Life: “I was sitting on the sofa and I had a message, saying, ‘Hi mate, would you like to have a chat?’

“Next thing I know I’m talking to Robbie Williams on FaceTime, helping him put the ink ribbon on his typewriter.

“We worked on a piece together of a double-decker bus and it was one of my proudest moments really, it was great working with him and he loves poetry and art.”

James has “loved drawing” since he was five years old and said trips to London to see the “iconic landmarks” captured his imagination.

From the moment he discovered what an architect was, he made it his mission to become one.

In 2014, while studying A-level art, his teacher set a task for the class to explore artists using technology in creative ways and produce work inspired by them.

James discovered the late artist Paul Smith, who had cerebral palsy, which affects movement and co-ordination, and created art using a typewriter as he “struggled to use pens and pencils”.

James managed to buy a typewriter for £15 from an elderly couple for his project, in 2014, after scouring every charity shop on Braintree high street.

His first typewriter art attempt was of New York’s Woolworth Building, and he quickly learned how to vary pressure for shading and use symbols creatively.

James said: “You’re puzzle-piecing the characters to make the right shapes – like bracket symbols for pupils and using the ‘@’ symbol for shading because of its large surface area.

“I don’t type line by line – there’s a lever that allows the carriage to move left to right, and then there’s a knob on the side of that lever that allows the paper to move up and down.

“My left hand is making the typewriter move to different parts of the page and my right hand is doing all the typing on the page.”

When he brought the piece into class, he said his teacher and classmates thought it was “really interesting”, and for the first time he felt “respected” by his peers and as though he had a skill “that people admired”.

Previously, he had been “really badly bullied” in school, using art as his “escapism”.

That same year, he began posting typewriter portraits of celebrities – such as actor Jon Heder from one of his favourite films, Napoleon Dynamite (2004) – on Instagram under the handle @jamescookartwork.

He added: “At the time, Jon Heder actually followed me on Instagram… and saw the drawing – I gave him the original when I met him at Comic Con.”

In 2015, James started his undergraduate architecture degree at University College London, but he soon realised he needed extra income because London was “so expensive”.

With his course being so demanding, he could not take on a “regular job”, so in 2016 he began accepting commissions via Instagram, which had then grown to around 1,000 followers.

He started depicting family portraits and pets for clients, which helped to “pay the bills”.

However, he said his career “really took off” in 2020 after a feature with BBC Look East – the story created a “snowball effect”, leading to appearances on Sky News, Good Morning Britain, This Morning and even Australian news channels.

His following jumped to around 30,000, and he said he was commissioned to create portraits of Ben Shephard and Kate Garraway.

After graduating in 2021, he “re-evaluated” his path, giving himself until the “end of the summer” to see if he could sustain a career as a full-time artist.

Since then, he has “never looked back”, amassing more than 840,000 Instagram followers, selling around 350 original works and more than 10,000 prints worldwide, with commissions starting at £2,000.

As he presses each key, the typewriter’s ink ribbon moves “incrementally so you are always putting fresh ink on the page”, with James using about one ribbon per drawing, costing £3.20 each, and around 60 in total per year.

He added: “I have to take regular breaks because my fingers ache, and a lot of people ask me if I get RSI (repetitive strain injury), but I’m holding out hope I don’t get it when I’m older!”

In 2020, James said he sent Tom Hanks a portrait via his production company, and in 2022 the actor returned it signed, with the note: “This is super!”

In 2024, he was commissioned by Dutch violinist and conductor Andre Rieu to create a live typewriter artwork of Vrijthof Square in the Netherlands during a concert in Maastricht, which he said was a “mind-boggling, incredible experience”.

That same year, he collaborated with Robbie Williams and, in May 2025, he also created an artwork of the aeroplane used in Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning while on the red carpet.

More recently, he said Yeardley Smith, the voice of Lisa Simpson, contacted him, and James sent her portraits of her famous character.

Alongside portraits, James continues to focus on architectural works, including The Ritz, the Royal Albert Hall and Oxford’s Bodleian Library.

He enjoys weaving hidden “Easter eggs” into his pieces, such as inscribing Mary Shelley’s name in the library drawing and embedding co-ordinates of the locations for upcoming works.

He often creates his art on location, with “crowds of people” gathering to watch.

James added: “The Royal Albert Hall project was just incredible – I love the Royal Albert Hall as a building and they said I could have the stage for several hours to do the artwork.

“Hearing the typewriter echo around the building was a very, very surreal experience.

“Battersea Power Station asked me to do a piece from their observation deck, and I took this 1931 Underwood typewriter, because they wanted a typewriter the same age as the building.”

He has had several videos go viral, as he thinks many watchers find the tapping sound “very therapeutic”, such as a video of him typing out a design in Times Square which got more than 42 million views.

He now has more than 100 typewriters in his collection, after being gifted many of them – one of his favourites even coming from Buckingham Palace.

“I believe it was from Queen Elizabeth’s secretary – when she retired she took her typewriter home with her, and she sent it to me as a gift after seeing my work,” he added.

Looking ahead, his dream is to create a piece from the observation deck of the Empire State Building because of his love of “New York architecture” and “cityscapes”.

To find out more about James’s artwork, visit: jamescookartwork.com.