Letters with a thought on the skin :) Lettering Tattoos
Letter and script tattoos are some of the most popular tattoo styles nowadays. However, the history of the style goes back to Ancient Egypt, there is evidence of hieroglyphic writing on human skin. Many letter and script tattoos that are popular today have been inspired for hundreds of years in the past. Ancient tattoos often had symbolic and profound meaning, and contemporary letter or script tattoos, this meaning hasn’t disappeared.
Unlike tattoos that depict images, letter tattoos focus on the beauty of the letter and the words themselves, rather than a specific scene or image. Hitting a tattoo with letters, in the spotlight of art is the specific one used script or font, as well as the meaning of the words. Regardless of culture and ethnicity, the letter - word and its meaning is the defining element of style.
New age tattoo artists brought a whole new artistic meaning to tattoo lettering. They step by step began to transfer calligraphy to tattoos, creating the letters, what we willingly draw today. Parallel to the letters, there is also a world of symbols, which mutually interacted supplementing each other.
Modern tattoo letters are characterized by the construction of multidimensional images using letters drawn in a unique author's font. The letters combine several styles, including calligraphy and ornamentation. Each tattoo is more than an aesthetic statement - it's a narrative, a personal history, independently engraved on your skin.
Script tattoo refers to a style of tattoo in which the design consists primarily of text or letters. It usually contains words, phrases, quotes, or even full sentences that have personal meaning to the tattoo recipient. Text tattoos may include punctuation marks and symbols, although they are not words or phrases. Question marks, exclamation marks, semicolons, numbers and ellipses.
Most often, this style tattoos are executed in black ink to emphasize the look and feel of the printed word, likening it to the print of a book, although most word and phrase tattoos do not include additional decorative elements or images, exists indentation for instance as Japanese-style lettering tattoos, where the word is component of the composition.
Calligraphic or Gothic-style fonts are often chosen because of the amount of detail in each word or letter words. Calligraphic thick lines can be bold and black, mimicking the dark ink waves used in traditional calligraphy, or left blank and open, using only the outline of a thick font.
Similar to these styles is the Old English Letter Tattoo. Old English is a very popular tattoo font style because it has curves and extra small elements that make the letters slightly lean forward, thus creating a sense of volume.
P.S.
Every tattoo is more than an aesthetic statement—it's a narrative, a personal history etched on your skin. Remember this when choosing the background and style of the letters, so that your narrative reflects the message or conversely becomes a reminder :)
