Do a tattoo artist have to draw the tattoo on a sheet of paper before placing the tattoo on your arm?

Answer 1

This does not always have to be the case, and in the instance of which you are speaking would be for an artist to draw you a custom design and then transferring it onto stencil paper. They could be using a stock piece of tattoo flash that they already have on file, then they simply have to run it through the thermofax machine with the stencil paper to make the stencil. They could draw the design right on your flesh with sterile skin scribe markers or Sharpie's, but these lines wipe off fairly easily, so a lot of artists don't prefer this method. Lastly, they could "free hand" the design right on you, which means that there is no stencil or sketch at all and the artist is creating the design and colors right out of his or her head.

Answer 2

Not necessarily, but this is most often the case. It's just more time affective and fluid as opposed to having to sit down with the client, brainstorm ideas, do upwards of a couple different sketches of the same thing for them since they usually don't really know what they want with custom tattoos, and you have then have to re-sketch the design on their body with a scribe, most likely have to make corrections to the sketch, and then finally start the tattoo. Some artists are purely "freehand", which is to say that they use NO outline of any kind and just do what comes to their head at the time and the client puts their trust in the artist and will go with it because their skill level is that high. Artists of this canon are few and far between, so this is why most artists stick to the sketch/stencil operation as opposed to the more arduous process of trying to do freehand or mixed freehand.