eHow Fashion, Style & Personal Care Editor
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By eHow Fashion, Style & Personal Care Editor, eHow Contributor
Half-sleeve tattoos typically refer to a tattoo that wraps completely around the upper arm from shoulder to elbow or half the arm. However, some people will also refer to a tattoo that wraps around the arm from elbow to wrist as a half-sleeve tattoo, but others call tattoos in this area a quarter sleeve tattoo because the lower arm is smaller than the upper arm. Half-sleeve tattoos can be pre-planned or can be designed by utilizing existing pieces and connecting them together with more pieces or a background.
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Decide placement for your half-sleeve tattoo. Determine if you want to go with the typical upper arm placement, which gives you more space to work with and will be easier to cover if need be than a sleeve on the lower arm. You will also need to decide if you want it on the right or left arm. Since the arm of a person's dominant hand is generally larger than the non-dominant arm, some people will choose to go with the larger space. On the flipside, some will choose to put a half-sleeve on the smaller arm, because sometimes it helps make the arm appear bigger.
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Determine a theme for your half-sleeve tattoo. Like full sleeve tattoos that cover the entire arm from shoulder to wrist, a half-sleeve tattoo will flow better if a common theme is used throughout the design. There are many common themes you can look at to get ideas for your design, but it's best to build upon these themes by adding your own unique style to make the piece more original and add special meaning to you.
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- 3
Choose individual tattoos to use within your half-sleeve. If you have existing pieces, you will need to spend time finding pieces that will flow with these or consider covering up any that simply don't fit the theme you're shooting for. If the place you're putting the half-sleeve is already mostly filled up, then you simply need to find a background to use to connect all the individual pieces into one flowing tattoo. A pre-planned half-sleeve is much easier to design because you're starting with a clean slate and can draw out the whole design on paper first to make sure it's going to look right before you start to ink.
- 4
Discuss your ideas with a tattoo artist. If you already have a regular tattoo artist, then it will be easy to get with him and decide the best way to design your half-sleeve based on the theme and individual pieces you've chosen. He can also take a tracing of the area to be tattooed and design the entire tattoo before ever putting any ink on you. This may or may not work if you're dealing with pre-existing tattoos that need to be covered up. Your tattoo artist may want to cover these first, before adding anything new to the area. If you don't have a regular tattoo artist take your ideas to several artists to judge who'd do the best job or ask someone who's already heavily tattooed for a referral.
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Prepare for more than one session to complete your half-sleeve. Although some half-sleeves have been completed in one long session, a majority of them are split up into separate sessions. How many sessions your half-sleeve takes depends on many factors including the intricacy of your design, the amount of time the tattoo artist can work in one sitting, your own individual pain tolerance and how much the area is swelling and/or taking ink. If the piece is being split up into separate sessions, your artist may break the piece into sections or do the entire outline the first sitting, then start on the shading and then in the later sittings work on the color.
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