I'm planing to get a full sleeve completed for the next ten to fifteen years. I'm either going to get started next summer or wait after I finish college before I start. Most of it will be traditional japanese art because it's really beautiful. For my first one, I was thinking of getting a dragon wrapping around my forearm. It would be about 6 inches long (about 1.5-2 inches over my wrist to about 1 inch under the elbow), the dragon would be about 2 inches thick and wrap around twice and add a couple of cherry blossoms in there and have some black swirls in the empty spaces. So I was wondering how long it would take the artist to do the line art and then color? An estimate of course since some artists are surely faster than others while some can work slower.

Ack, that would not sit well at all with a full Japanese sleeve. Traditional themed sleeves can often be seen as bits of various tattoos working together. However, Japanese themed sleeves are often about an entire picture on your arm, like taking a painting and wrapping it around. You shouldn’t go pieces like that if you want a true Japanese sleeve.

Japanese sleeves often are about the detail the artist can put in the images…the beauty of the scales on koi or dragons, the expression in the faces of the samurai, how serene the geisha is. Going with such a small tattoo means a lack of detail.

You would need to pick one important theme / idea to have in the sleeve. Many people go with dragons (and the dragon wraps around the whole arm, often finishing with the head on the chest), koi, geisha, samurai. A bigger canvas like the back can have 2 or more images in there (dragon fighting samurai) but on an arm, its better to keep to 1 main idea and then put different things around it like the blossoms, flowers, banners, smoke, whatever.

The dragon is a good idea, but having that will most probably need to be covered up for a full Japanese arm sleeve.

When getting Japanese sleeves, you often need to have the entire picture planned out and done, and then applied in many stages. So you need to find a very very competent artist that has an amazing Japanese style portfolio, to do the sleeve for you. Work with that 1 artist from start to finish to ensure consistency in the lines and inking.

I’d put money down saying that if you went with a 6 inch x 2 inch dragon wrapping around your arm and your end goal is a full sleeve, you will regret it.

Hope this helps.

By 2 inches I meant the width of the dragon's body would be 2 inches thick, not the whole piece, and 6 inches is about the length I would use on my forearm (though I did do a wrong measure, so it's around 8 inches, not a full sleeve, but more than 3/4) because, I agree with you, it would be awkward and would lack detail. The whole dragon piece itself would cover my whole forearm and maybe part of my upper arm if more space is needed and I was thinking about covering my upper arm with a koi fish and water or a second dragon. I still have at least a year to think about the rest. Sorry if it caused a bit of confusion.

As for the artist, I already know with which artist I will work with. I've seen his portfolio and I love his japanese work and the way he applies the color is really beautiful.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: ranxston,

I like the idea of a koi fish on your upper arm to complete the sleeve. It's more of a Chinese legend than Japanese, but koi that can swim up a certain section of the Yellow River are said to be strong enough to grow into dragons (that section of river is hence called Dragon's Gate). You can have the "overarching theme" of a koi - a relatively strong but still merely earthly being - evolving into a dragon - something divine and powerful and wise - and I think the story would translate pretty well to a Japanese art-style. Maybe put the whole thing on a backdrop of waves (instead of the black swirls; the blossoms might work around the dragon as something beautiful and heavenly) to portray the idea of swimming upriver and to give it a bit more cohesion. If it were me, though, I'd put the koi on my forearm swimming up toward the dragon on my upper arm. But that's just me. ^^;

All that said... as my only tatt is infinitely less intricate than yours will be, I have no idea how long it might take.

If you want to get a full japanese sleeve check out an artist named Aaron Bell http://slavetotheneedle.com/tattoos/aaron.asp