Armband Tattoo Ideas and How to Fit a Band

What a armband tattoo means

An armband is a format before it is a picture. It says whatever its pattern says: the band of moons here is about cycles, the barbed wire about pain or confinement, the heartbeat line about one heart in particular, the knotwork about heritage. The ring adds one idea of its own, continuity, which is why bands are chosen to mark an unbroken bond or a vow.

The Polynesian band is the one with a living tradition behind it. In Samoa a tattooed armlet is called a taulima, and unlike the pe'a and the malu, the full tattoos of men and women, it carries no rite and is often personal. The shark teeth, spearheads and ocean swells in the three-row band here come from that vocabulary but serve as ornament, so anyone who wants a band to speak for a family or an island should take it to a Polynesian artist, who draws for a wearer rather than from a sheet.

Two bands defined the 1990s. The black tribal band came out of California; the other was barbed wire, which Pamela Anderson had tattooed round her upper arm in 1995 for the film Barb Wire rather than have it painted on each day, and later had largely lasered away. Both became shorthand for a dated tattoo, and both come back here redrawn: the tribal bands as flames and hooked spikes, the wire as two shaded strands twisted together.

A plain black band has a separate history. The black cloth armband is an old sign of mourning, still worn by footballers when a match follows a death or holds a minute's silence, and some people have a solid band tattooed for the same reason. None of the bands here is solid, so a memorial band is something to ask for rather than pick from this grid.

Where the design comes from

The Greek key takes its name from the Maeander, a river in Asia Minor that loops back on itself, and potters of the Geometric period painted it round vases in the eighth century BC. The plaited borders of the Book of Kells, made around 800, stand behind the Celtic band; the two slender biting beasts here are in the Urnes style, named after the carved portal of a Norwegian stave church; and the gothic arches follow bar tracery, first cut at Reims Cathedral early in the thirteenth century. Barbed wire is the newest pattern on the page: Joseph Glidden of DeKalb, Illinois, patented his version in 1874.

Choosing yours

• Measure the arm, not the drawing. The pattern has to repeat a whole number of times round it, so the artist stretches or squeezes the units slightly, or adds or drops one, until the repeat closes. The join goes on the inner arm, where a small mismatch is least seen, and is checked standing with the arm relaxed, since flexing moves the line.
• The upper arm is a cone, wider at the shoulder than at the elbow, so a band drawn as a straight strip, as every design here is, lands tilted once wrapped. The stencil has to be curved into a shallow arc and resized from one edge to the other, or the band drawn freehand on the arm with a marker. Straight-edged patterns such as the Greek key and the gothic arches show the error most; the snake and the bramble forgive it.
• Choose the height for the arm. A single row of arrows or moons suits a slim arm or a forearm; the three-row Polynesian band and the Japanese waves need 6 cm or more to keep their rows apart.

Common questions