INk Master Recap : Finale Part 1
By Derek Paradis
The end is near to another awesome season of @inkmaster. We started with 10 returning artists and along the way 4 returning winners came back for another shot at another win and now two masters and four artists who were finalists remain. They have a one out of six chance of winning $250K and the title of Ink Master. All season long, their skills were put to the test and now the fight for the finale starts now. To earn a top four spot in the finale, the artists must endure not one but two grueling tattoo sessions. In the first challenge, the artists must create a single session 12-hour tattoo, where what they tattoo is up to them however, the style is not. Watch along if you’re curious but here’s another twist, for the first time this season, the judges @joelmadden @ryanashleymalarkey
@amijames1 and @nikkohurtado will critique their tattoos blind and will rank the tattoos without knowing which artist did the tattoo! Whoever is ranked the highest, will earn the first spot in the top 4 and will not tattoo in the second round. The stakes are higher than ever because two of them will fall short of the finale so it’s anyone’s game.
Here are the round one tattoos. The six artists had to create a single 12-hour session leg tattoo where the subject was up to them but the artists drew skulls to determine what style they tattooed. Gian drew surrealism, Angel and DJ drew color realism, Creepy Jason drew neotraditional, and Bob and Anthony drew Japanese. After the challenge and blind judging, the judges determined the rankings for the tattoos. The highest ranked best tattoo of the day went to @badcaseofpurpose, he created a Japanese geisha where she’s looking at herself in her reflection but on the back of the geisha is a monster and the composition. Number 2, @djtambe created an awesome color realistic tiger with smooth textures, saturated color, details, and dimensions. Number 3, @theangelrose created a cute color realistic Sphinx cat with pixelated squares with saturated color techniques and precision. Number 4, @giankarle did a surrealistic female face in broken pieces revealing a skull with birds flying. Although the judges said it was more neotraditional, his technical application and composition were awesome. Number 5, @creepy_jason did a neotraditional wolf head with a sheep head on top with armor and as awesome as the textures were in the animals, there was too much detail in the armor that made it illegible. Unfortunately, the lowest ranked tattoo that was eliminated was @antmikes. He scored the lowest doing a Japanese dragon. It brought me to tears a little because he chose the dragon to represent him learning more about the art and culture of the Japanese. After conspiracy of winning season 7 for an “unfinished” tattoo, he went for it and went big. He always had a lot of heart for his canvases and art and I respect the hell out of him. He did for his family and I think he did a great job in this season.
In the second round, the four artists had to create a line drawing for a tattoo marathon and each artist had one hour each to tattoo their own, and the three others. Once again their tattoos were judged blind. Jason won the marathon and secured second spot in top 4 and Gian ranking second secured the third top four spot and the artist with the lowest ranking will fall short of finale. Unfortunately, we’ll have to wait next week where the episode ended in another cliffhanger whether DJ or Angel gets the last spot, either way, they really went for it and gave it 110%. The marathon continues.