Freehand Tattoos

A freehand tattoo means that the stencil is drawn directly on your skin rather than drawn on paper, put through a stencil machine, and then transferred to your skin. These are quite often done with sharpies or special stencil markers; not literally freehanding with a machine. 

This process can look a little odd if you’re not familiar with it. Artists generally start with an under sketch in a light colour and then go over the lines with a darker colour to get those crisp lines really clear. Depending on the complexity there can be more layers and colours to get the stencil just right and with all the tattoo indicators the artist needs. These sharpies are one time use to keep the process sterile. The markers are thrown out after they are used on the skin.

We had one client a few days ago that was telling me the first time they got tattooed their artist did a freehand stencil on them. They said at the time that they weren’t sure what the artist was doing and if it was a normal way to do a tattoo. I wanted to write about that this week and make it more common knowledge. There are different ways to do a tattoo and freehand is a more advanced technique. There are also instances where one part of a tattoo may be stenciled as ‘normal’ from a paper and then freehanded around the pre done stencil to get the best fit. 

We use freehand to get the perfect fit. Instances of freehand are usually very organic shapes like vines, flowers, tentacles, ect. that need to be intricately sculpted to the body and muscles in a way that laying a paper stencil on the skin wouldn’t get the best fit. These can also be advantageous for gap fillers when the area getting tattooed is a small or odd shape where the easiest way to design a filler is by drawing it right in. Charm bracelet tattoos are also often done freehand, as it can be easier to line up both sides of the bracelet. Freehand can also be used for a general guideline of a piece that is going to have a lot of texture that will come from the tattooing process that wouldn’t be outlined on the stencil either, for example Loren uses freehand to get the best fit for her watercolour. 

There are a myriad of reasons an artist may use freehand. It is a totally legitimate way to do a stencil and actually an advanced way of creating a very specific tattoo. It may look and feel a little weird while they’re drawing on you but this technique produces some of the most stunning and well placed tattoos! 

All images by Chris @damncoyotechris

Gatekeeper

Hi there! I'm Taylor, you may know me as Sterling Skull reception, or gatekeeper, or most recently Tater (thanks Chris). I love writing, creating and I love tattoos; so what better way to use my passions than to bring you a personal experience of our studio via a blog! Welcome, please stay a while!