Alphabetic Writing Tattoos

A broad range of ink falls under this category, everything from the graffiti style lettering that dominates the hip hop ink scene through to the recent trend for ‘font’ type text. Just as art of all kinds has influenced pictographic tattooing, writing from every period of history and culture has found its way onto the tattoo scene. Old English, Italics, Celtic lettering, typefaces and runes; anything you can think of has the potential for employment! Most text lettering is rendered effectively in solid black, or black and grey. This is not to deny, however, the effectiveness of colour in the most ornate versions of textual tattoos – those that take inspiration from ancient monastic texts and the book of Kells are stunning when rendered with vivid block colour, swirls and curves of ornament popping all the more. Text tattoos that take direct inspiration from modern fonts found on the universally used text programme Word have become insanely popular in recent years, deployed by those with a devotion to quotes, phrases and verbal reference; a long Shakespearean quote is rendered in this way to snake, line-by-line, down a fore-arm or a shin. Simple philosophical phrases are often rendered between shoulder blades or across the lower belly. For many fans of this particular style of tattooing it can be a cheeky thumbed nose towards the sometimes ornate, difficult and complex artwork of the traditional styles of tattooing – they veer completely away from it towards a permanent piece of ink that makes a simple, direct, pointed statement and nothing more. This is epitomized in the enthusiasm for simple, one or two word tattoos like “be,” “I am” and “now” that have cropped up in recent years.