Celtic Tattoo (Wk. 2)

  Throughout this past week, we had talked about Celtic Illuminated Manuscripts and how they were an important aspect of the history of Graphic Design.  We looked at the illuminated manuscripts mainly through the Book of Kells.  This book had a huge array of celtic designs, and they also incorporated fancy initial caps in their work.

This online picture is showing a woman with a Celtic tattoo.  I was drawn to it because the tattoo looks incredible, plus it also contained type alongside the design- needless to say, it reminded me of ancient illuminated manuscripts.  Even looking at the tattoo from several feet back, it's quite evident that it took precise and intricate detailing to end up with this finished product.  The artist paid close attention to getting accurate shadows and shading to get a good feeling of three dimensionality.  This is something that many tattoo artists strive to achieve- making a flat tattoo appear 3-D.  

The typography seems somewhat appropriate for the design.  However, I feel this typeface looks too much like a Gothic-style textura instead of the Celtic uncials and half-uncials that we saw in class.   Since the Celtic design doesn't have the correct typeface to go along with the tattoo, I feel it isn't an accurate tattoo.  However, this is a good example of how people can get confused with history.  Maybe they should have taken a History of Graphic Design class,... that way they would have chosen the right font for their tattoo,...