Chicano
What is Chicano?
FAQ
Chicano
Chicano
Chicano
What is Chicano?
FAQ
Chicano
Chicano is Mexican-American tattooing in soft black and grey: portraits, script lettering, and stories of family, faith and loyalty.
Chicano tattooing comes out of the Mexican-American communities of California, between the prisons and the barrios. It began outside the trade entirely, with no shops, no magazines and no suppliers, then moved into professional studios in Los Angeles over the 1970s, picked up machines and visibility there, and traveled the world through specialist magazines and conventions. It works almost always in black and grey, often with a single needle: fine lines and very soft, smooth shading with no harsh edges. The imagery is codified: the Virgin of Guadalupe, rosaries, praying hands, roses, laughing and crying masks, the clown girl, lowriders, neighborhood scenes and family portraits, tied together by hand-drawn script. Its strength lies in a contrast, the most delicate technique in the service of hard subjects: family, faith, loyalty, loss, lockup. Every element of a piece says something specific, and the lettering is inseparable from the images around it. It asks for a very steady hand, real skill in portraiture and script drawn freehand. Large pieces on the back, chest, forearm or calf give faces and lettering room, and soft greys need that size and enough contrast to stay readable as they age. The word itself deserves respect: Chicano was long used as an insult before the Chicano Movement reclaimed it, from the 1960s on.
On YokoFolio, pick the style Chicano and then your city, and widen the radius if the list is short. Look at the greys first: they should be very soft, with no blotches or stair-stepping, and the portraits should look like the person. Lettering is the other test: good Chicano script is perfectly even, with regular thick-and-thin strokes. Ask for healed work: single-needle work moves more than most, and that's where you judge the hand, including whether the lightest greys are still there. When you contact the artist from their profile, ask whether they draw the script freehand, and bring a sharp, well-lit photo for any portrait. If the imagery is new to you, ask what each element means before it goes on.
It isn't a font but a family of hand-drawn scripts, inherited from neighborhood calligraphy and prison letters: steeply slanted English script, gothic letters, shaded capitals, strong thick-and-thin. Nothing is typed on a computer: good Chicano lettering is drawn freehand so it fits the length of the text and the curve of the body, often wrapped around a portrait or set in a banner. Names, family names, dates and phrases in Spanish or English are the classic content; if yours is in Spanish, check spelling and accents with someone who knows the language. Ask to see the preparatory drawing and read it letter by letter before the session. On YokoFolio, a piece that is only script is listed under Lettering, so look there too for artists who specialize in it.
The “smile now, cry later” masks, the clown girl (payasa), the angel, the skull, the rose, praying hands with a rosary, the Virgin of Guadalupe, Aztec warriors, lowriders, neighborhood scenes and family portraits. Every element says something specific: faith and protection for the Virgin, the good times and their price for the masks, love or remembrance for the rose, pride in heritage for the Aztec figures. A piece is put together like a story, often around a name or a date. Some signs have had, or still have, a strong meaning within the community: a number, three dots or a teardrop can point to a neighborhood, a gang or time served. Read up, and ask the artist before you wear a symbol you don't know.
Both use smooth, soft shading, often in black and grey, so look at what the shading carries. Chicano works with its own codes: the Virgin of Guadalupe, rosaries, praying hands, the clown girl, lowriders, roses, and hand-drawn script woven through the images, often composed like a collage of portraits, symbols and lettering. Realism renders any subject as it looks in real life or in a photograph, in black and grey or in color, chasing accurate proportions, light and texture, without those cultural codes. So a black and grey portrait of a grandmother with no Chicano imagery is Realism; the same portrait framed by roses, a rosary and her name in script is Chicano. If soft grey shading carries Chicano imagery or script, it's Chicano.
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