I’ve got one little, somewhat unremarkable tattoo as of right now, and I’ve recently decided I want to get more. I’d like to start planning a couple full sleeves and working on them within a few years. I can’t decide yet if I want to do themed sleeves or just do whatever and make it all work together. If I do go with themed sleeves, my current plans are an ocean theme for one and a hell/demon theme for the other (the ocean one is for sure if I go with a theme, I’m still on the fence about the other one). But I have some questions about this whole process of planning sleeves and actually having them done.

If I go with a theme, is my best bet to stick with one artist and have him/her do the entire sleeve? Because I kind of live in the middle of nowhere and most of the artists I’ve found that I really like are several hours away and I just can’t see myself making regular trips like that to get a sleeve done. One of the artists I’m looking at is Tim Pangburn, who’s about 3 hours from me, and I think that’s about the most I could travel and even that would be inconvenient. Would having several artists work on a themed sleeve look too disjointed? And how do you guys even manage to travel so much to get so much work done? I’m not sure how I would manage with my job. If I had one artist working on a sleeve, would it seem in bad taste if it took me years to complete it? Or would they be understanding and not get pissed off at me?