Traditional smile now cry later tattoo professional#

Negrete’s work eventually came to the attention of Goodtime Charlie and Jack Rudy – who is best known for inventing the single needle for the professional tattoo machine – in Good Time Charlie’s Tattooland on Whittier Boulevard. However, the combination of fine line work, precise detailing and new shading techniques meant that ‘prison style’ quickly started gaining favour outside the prison system, with members of the public actively looking for shops that could, and would, replicate this style. Black and gray tattoos were associated with gang members and prison convicts.

It had a strong connections with the US military, especially the Navy. These usually had a nautical theme and were popularised by artist Norman Keith Collins aka Sailor Jerry (1911 – 1973)Īround this time, Traditional American, with its thick blue-black lines and bold, solid colours, was the popular tattoo style. This single needle application allowed inmates to produce finer line work and detail in their tattoos than contemporary tattoo shops. This could include the engine of a radio or cassette player, a toothbrush, pen, guitar string, pencil eraser. Unlike conventional tattoo shops of the time, which only used tattoo machines that worked with groups of needles, Negrete used the ‘prison-style’ tattoo technique, which used a single needle – because tattooing was illegal within the prison system, inmates constructed machines from different odds and ends available to them. As gang member, Negrete’s customers were often fellow gang members and his tattooing regularly included images associated with Chicano street gangs, many of which drew from their Mexican cultural hertiage: portraits of La Virgen de Guadalupe and Jesu Cristo, Aztec gods, Adelitas, Zapata and other Mexican revolutionary figures, as well as images from lowrider culture, gang affiliation symbols and ornate calligraphy. When he was finally released, he continued tattooing from his apartment. In an interview with Kristie Bertucci, he explains that the staff at this program were more lenient when it came to tattooing and so he spent nearly every day of the next three years honing his skills. During his time in youth authority, Negrete was moved to a program for the “criminally insane”. He started tattooing himself at the age of eleven and by the age of eighteen he was almost completely covered in handpicked tattoos.

Traditional smile now cry later tattoo how to#

He was shown how to put a basic tattoo machine together, using different items available – tattooing is illegal in the prison system, but more on that later – and taught some basic application techniques. While there, he became fascinated with the tattoos of the other men, so much so that he decided to try it out for himself. Frequently in trouble with the law, he spent time in and out of juvenile halls. The son of a Jewish mother and Mexican father, Freddy Negrete grew up in Los Angeles in the 1970s.