Original subtitles

male announcer: On the last episode

of "Ink Master: Shop Wars"...

- We've kind of hit a groove with the alliance.

- Don't help the veterans.

announcer: Another veteran shop arrived

with a target on its back.

- Boneface and Hobo Ink.

- Hope you plan on getting blood on them Yeezy boots.

- You gonna put 'em on there?

- Shots fired.

- Did you try to [bleep] people or did you not?

- What--what does this have to do with art?

- I'm not an artist. I tattoo.

- That's the [bleep] stupidest thing

I've ever heard in my whole life.

- Look, you can art your ass all you want.

I'm here to win.

announcer: In the elimination tattoo,

shops crumbled

as tension between teammates intensified.

- Tap it with water.

- Oh, yes. Just stop.

- Sweep out, don't go circular.

- I don't have time to finesse.

- Not there, but on the tip, yes.

What are you doing, Thom?

You're not following the game plan,

and you're going right back to the style

we're getting called out for.

- Don't be nervous.

That color palette makes no sense.

Lalo, you had one job!

[dramatic music]

announcer: In the elimination,

Black Spade Tattoo,

Classic Trilogy Tattoo,

and House of Monkey

were the bottom three shops.

- Black Spade Tattoo.

- The bottom is such a mess.

That [bleep] just can't fly.

- Classic Trilogy Tattoo.

- These guys are doing the same static thing.

- The one word y'all need to add is versatility.

- House of Monkey.

- There's just a lot of peach, a lot of baby blue.

It's not solid. It's not smooth.

- House of Monkey, you do not

have what it takes to be Master Shop.

♪

announcer: Eight shops remain

to take on returning veteran shops.

But only one will earn a $200,000 prize

and the title of Master Shop.

[rock music]

♪

[epic rock music]

♪

- I'm just really frustrated.

We're doing good tattoos, but they're just

raking us over the coals because

it's "one specific style."

So we've got to do something different.

- Yeah. But I remember, when meeting you,

that you did the traditionals, you did the real,

you did the single line, you did all that other stuff.

When we started working together,

that's what we were both doing.

- Hell, yeah.

- And I think we've got to get back to that.

- Chris literally said, "You guys do great work

but you're clammed up." - Yeah.

- It's like, either we open that clam and you see the pearl,

or it stays on the bottom in the mud.

- Yeah, we've got to pull that gem out,

make everybody step back and be like,

"Holy crap, they're here."

- I'm tired of being middle of the road.

- Definitely.

- From this point forward,

I'm gonna go above and beyond.

[bleep] balls to the wall.

- Yeah.

[intense rock music]

♪

[dramatic music]

♪

- The tougher this competition gets,

the harder you must work to stand out.

And in the end, only one shop will earn

the first-ever title of Master Shop.

- Yeah.

- Standing in your way is the next returning veteran.

From Las Vegas, Nevada, he made it all the way

to the finale in season seven.

Representing Basilica Tattoo,

Christian Buckingham.

- [bleep].

- Great. Now we're gonna start getting finalists in here.

That's got me nervous.

- Last time I competed, I got completely robbed.

- I've got a lot of problems with this tattoo.

The composition and the flow of the hair is pretty weak.

- It's surreal.

- It's surreally [bleep]ed up.

- Aesthetically, it's pleasing.

It just doesn't knock new school out of the park.

- This tattoo came out super soft, super smooth.

This is expertise at work.

- You're a definite competitor here.

- Who has the jury determined

deserves a spot in the top two?

- Clean Rock One. [cheers and applause]

- I'm sorry, Christian, you do not have what it takes

to be Ink Master.

- People clearly didn't like me.

I lost on a popularity vote.

But I'll tell you right now, one thing I will not do

for the win is change who I am.

- Christian, welcome back, man. Who'd you bring with you?

- This is Noelin Wheeler.

He's one of the guys who inspired me to be a tattooer.

- Christian most definitely should have won Ink Master,

so in my mind, I'm actually coming to this competition

with an Ink Master.

I've been tattooing so long,

whatever you bring me, I'll kill it.

- I'm bringing one of the guys that taught me how to tattoo.

We're gonna monkey stomp everybody here.

- Welcome.

- Thanks. - All right, Christian.

This week is designed to put your shop to the ultimate test.

If you succeed, you stay.

But if you fail, your shop is out of here

just as fast as you returned.

- Man, this sucks.

This is the opposite of what I thought.

On my season, when the vets came back,

they had the advantage.

This time, we've got the disadvantage.

- This week, we're testing ingenuity.

- Ingenuity:

the ability to pull your head out of your ass

and think of cool new ways to do stuff.

- Today, you must create a design

by injecting colored water

into a canvas made entirely

out of bubble wrap.

- Hell, yeah. - Okay.

- Bubble wrap is used for shipping packages.

How are you supposed to make art out of this?

- Using a syringe, you must fill each bubble

with colored water, one by one.

The more restrictive your canvas,

the more ingenuity you need

to create extraordinary art.

- Thousands of bubbles.

And you have to consistently put stuff in there

and make fades and designs and line work.

That's a huge task.

- You are not limited to tattoo designs.

We've pretty much seen them all.

We are not looking for roses, hearts, skulls.

So feel free to do what you want to do to impress us.

- You will have six hours.

And your time begins now.

[rock music]

- With this bubble wrap art,

they have to inject ink into a huge sheet of bubble wrap

one bubble at a time.

This is a good test for ingenuity,

because it's thinking a different way

than you usually think when you make art.

- Where the skin breaks are, you just fill it with water.

- We're looking for something that looks really good

from a distance so that you kind of

lose the pixelation effect.

♪

- Yep, that went everywhere.

- Hey, maybe we can play on the fact that

Nuñez is sick and tired of skulls and roses,

and do a skull puking roses.

- Perfect.

- That might actually be kind of cool.

Just like, oh, bleh, like... - Yeah.

- Well, what if you did steering wheel, hands, face?

- The only risk is we keep going

with the animated theme, you know?

It's stylistically the same thing

we're continually getting called out for.

We need to get more creative.

- We want it to be very dynamic, 'cause that's thing.

We got called out for being stale last time.

- I also thought, like, some faith piece.

- Yeah, because that's gonna be something completely different.

- We're gonna do a play on the original sin,

the Garden of Eden, the snake and the apple.

- What colors? The red apple.

So we've already got the reds.

- I resort back to faith simply because

it's a driving force in my life that helped me

overcome addictions on multiple occasions.

And it's just good to know that there's

something there that I believe in that's

much more stronger and higher than I am.

- Let's just do a gray wash back here.

- That's what I'm thinking. Even if we did like a vignette.

- Yeah, exactly. Perfect.

[dramatic rock music]

- Well, I was thinking of a hand holding something.

- I think we can do something that's more dynamic than that.

We got another chance.

Things aren't going the way we want it.

Let's do something different, man.

Let's shock these mother[bleep].

How about a ill bee? Yellow and black.

- [softly exhales]

- You know what I'm talking about?

- ES has a vision. So you know what?

Even though we had problems,

I'm gonna go with him.

If we can work together,

we can knock this thing out.

- Four more hours.

[energetic rock music]

♪

- It's the weirdest challenge ever, but it is fun.

Having the least experience and being the youngest,

of course, we're being underestimated.

But we have won two tattoo challenges.

There's teams that literally haven't won anything.

- I have an idea.

Take the black and just

dilute so we get a good fade.

Look, look. check it out.

Check out the blend.

We're cute, but we're a [bleep] threat.

- Oh, that looks cool. I like it.

[intense music]

♪

- We want to have snowflakes fall through the piece

to give it a little movement.

We can use White-Out.

It's gonna be a really cool, ingenious way

to do snowflakes that no one else thought of.

- Oh, they used the White-Out. Clever.

It's got a good look. - Thank you.

- Two hours remaining. Two hours.

[rock music]

♪

- I think we're pulling it off as well as we can.

This is definitely a lot trickier

than we thought it was gonna be.

There's a lot of bubbles to fill.

- This is one of those ones that's way harder than it looks.

- Every challenge so far... - Really?

- Has been, like, crazy weird. - Yeah.

- I was hoping it was gonna be easy this season.

- Christian isn't just a really good tattooer.

He's also really good at this game.

- Hey, since your partner's gonna be a dick,

you've got blue [bleep] all over your face.

I got your back, though.

- We need to do well here.

I don't want the skull pick to fall into the hands

of returning veterans.

[heavy rock music]

♪

- What do you see? - Nothing.

- Yeah, that ain't bad, Billy. - [bleep] horrible, man.

This thing is jacked.

I came here to tattoo,

not to do flash challenges.

[bleep].

- Popped you, huh? - Yeah, it got me.

[dramatic music]

- Five,

four,

three,

two,

one, that's it.

Time's up.

♪

- It really looks more like puke now.

- [chuckles]

- Christian, I know that you were kind of

ripping on the judges' dislike for skulls and roses,

but that's a real risky move, dude.

We've all been grinding our asses off to stay here,

and you're gonna come in

first day you're back with jokes?

I'm not into it.

- [laughs] [bleep] it.

[dramatic music]

- Okay, artists, it is time to critique your work,

and let's start with Classic Trilogy.

- I really like the different tones

of every color you got, especially in the belly.

But where the snake wraps around the apple

is very hard to tell what's going on.

There's not enough contrast. It's too dark.

- You've really got to start popping stuff.

This is your week. This is it.

- Allegory Arts.

- Did y'all use any reference

for the shape of the polar bear?

It's an elephant with a polar bear head.

- Well, they are similarly shaped, so--

- No.

- As far as your cave, and the icicles hanging,

and all the contrast you get are great.

- We used White-Out so we made it snow. So we got the whole--

- They actually said you couldn't, so.

You couldn't draw on the front of it,

so I kind of think they broke the rules.

- You could use the tools that you had.

- Yeah, I thought about it too. - Ingenuity's a bitch.

- Thom, you're saying that Allegory should be disqualified?

- Yeah, they broke the rules.

- Does everybody else here feel that way about it?

- No. - That's cool.

- Nah. - That's fine.

- Nobody else give a [bleep]?

All right, let's move along.

- Thom is acting like a child.

I don't think I've been told on since I was in the third grade.

It's an ingenuity challenge.

Just because you didn't [bleep] think of it

doesn't mean it's breaking a rule.

It just means I'm smarter than you are.

- Black Spade.

- It's a very striking piece from across the room.

How perfect the honeycomb comes out

is what really pushes your foreground forward.

The color play you have, the blends,

almost give it more of a realistic tone,

even though it's pixelated.

- Strong play.

- Okay, Basilica.

- You were sick of skulls and roses,

so we thought we'd do a skull that was sick from roses.

- It's kind of hard to see the shape of the rose,

and the further away you are, the more confusing it is.

As far as trying to go with the black and grey,

the contrast just isn't there.

Your image gets lost.

- Take these things as serious as you can

for the life that you're here, because this could be

the thing that saves you.

- Apparently Nuñez has no sense of humor

and we can't do anything funny.

- Unkindness Art.

- The rabbit and the anatomy stands out really strong.

- Using the cool tones for the shading and the body

against the warmer tones of the background

is a really nice way to have this thing jump forward.

That's a great example of ingenuity.

Pinz and Needlez.

- It does stand strong.

The color play is nice from a distance.

- I do applaud you for doing a very crisp, symmetrical image.

The wings have the nice shape on both sides,

and it looks very sharp.

- Artistic Skin Design.

- Do you think that this is very legible?

- I thought we should've went bigger

after looking at it from afar.

- You lose it in your color.

You don't have a way to really make that frog stand out.

- It's one of the hardest ones in the room

to tell what's going on.

- All right, Old Town Ink.

- It is hard to pull off the shape of a face

with those pixelated dots.

She ends up having a very squared-off,

weird-shaped chin and cyclops-looking feel.

Just falls a little short.

- Boneface Ink.

- No clue what's going on.

You can see this big lizard head thing.

It's not the correct anatomy for a snake,

with the eyes so far back in the head.

And then you don't follow body in any direction.

Everything else is unrecognizable.

- Boneface, now I understand

why you said you're not an artist, man.

I can't even figure this thing out.

There's not a damn thing good with it.

[dramatic music]

- We have backgrounds too much.

- Dane is losing his mind.

- Don't be mad.

- This kid's chewing his arm off.

We're gonna have to tell you to just stop,

and we'll have to tattoo ourselves.

I'm about to lose it.

[rousing dramatic music]

- All right, guys, today we're testing ingenuity.

Christian Buckingham comes back to the competition.

- I hated it.

It's a skull and a rose. - Yeah.

- He's a strong tattooer,

but he wasn't really a strong flash challenge player.

- For sure.

- Overall, I think most of the field

did pretty good for a new medium.

- Unkindness Art, impressive.

- The shading on it is so subtle

that you don't see it when you walk up on it.

And yet when you're back all the way across the room,

you really catch these soft tones

that fade off into the white.

- I mean, they probably hit anatomy

better than anybody in the room.

- But you've got to say that Black Spade

brought out a pretty strong bee.

- Today, they turned in a piece that looks great,

up close, from a distance,

no matter where you look at it.

And they followed through with their swing.

- We want to make a decision? - I'm pretty set.

- You got it? - I'm good.

- All right, let's let them know.

All right, guys.

Today, some of you used ingenuity

to think outside the box.

The judges have decided

the winner of today's flash challenge is...

[dramatic music]

Black Spade Tattoo.

- When you look around this room, that's the one that,

up close and from a distance,

hits every benchmark.

Congratulations. - Thank you.

- You guys really came back strong.

- About damn time.

Shout out to my man ES,

because we actually worked as a team.

- Word.

- Congratulations, ES and King Ruck.

You'll have the power to assign

all human canvases in the next elimination tattoo.

And you can all head back to the loft.

- I'm actually really happy to see that

one of the veterans won.

I really hope Ruck and ES

hook us up with a skull pick.

I don't need to come out and flop twice in a row.

I want to make sure that everybody knows

we came here to play.

- We were just on the bottom.

Now we got a W, and we got a skull pick.

- Who's been doing the best since we've been here?

- Unkindness and Allegory.

They've been consistently staying up there.

- I want to shut down the whole group.

- They're the ones who counted us out.

They're the ones who sent us down.

- So we've got to turn it around and spin it right back at them.

- You better be ready. You better have your pants on tight.

I want that money.

My man.

[dramatic music]

♪

- Welcome to the elimination tattoo.

The shops that impress us

will be one step closer

to earning $200,000,

a feature in "Inked" magazine,

and for the first time ever,

the title of Master Shop.

- Christian, as a returning veteran artist,

it's on your shop to prove that you deserve to be here

by overcoming your weaknesses.

In Christian's honor, you'll all be judged on ingenuity.

Now, there's no better test of ingenuity

than a new school tattoo.

- [bleep].

- Whoo!

- That's in my [bleep] honor?

I can't believe they smacked me with this right out the gate.

I absolutely hate this style.

I think this is for children and coloring books,

not for tattoo artists.

- With bright, saturated colors and crazy proportions,

these images are known for

their creative view of the world.

- Yes.

New school, it's hard.

You have to take something that's boring and flat,

and make something that you haven't seen before.

My time to shine, baby!

- Your shop will create one tattoo on the same canvas.

However, this time,

one artist will tattoo for the first three hours,

and the other artist will tattoo for the last three hours.

- I'm gonna try to tattoo this whole tattoo in three hours

so there's little for Hobo to do.

We need to survive until the next round.

- Let's meet your canvases.

[dramatic music]

♪

Black Spade Tattoo,

your shop won the flash challenge.

That means that you have the power

to assign the canvases.

Be strategic.

- I want a monkey playing the drums on my back.

- I'm super hyped about having control.

- I want a cupcake monster,

chasing scared blueberries on my bicep.

- We're gonna break this little cool kids' club up.

Artistic Skin Design,

Allegory Arts,

and Unkindness,

they need to be shaken up.

- I would like a punk rock unicorn

with an NYC background on my calf.

- [chuckles] - And Christian?

I know he knows how to tattoo,

and I know he can play the game.

He needs to go home.

- So I want a magical wizard raccoon

on my ribs.

- Ribs? - On your ribs?

- Mm-hmm, yes.

- The ribs are a very, very sensitive area.

And most people do not want

to get tattooed on their ribs,

even for a few minutes.

- I want a mad scientist

holding mechanic's tools on my head.

- On your head? - Yeah.

- I want a heavy metal rock band on my left forearm.

- A rock band?

- You want the whole ensemble? - Yeah.

- What?

- That's a whole lot of weird detail

to try and pack into a small area.

No.

- A platypus

conquering a lion on my chest.

- [bleep]. This is why I hate new school.

These completely wacky ideas.

Don't stick me with that stupid platypus.

- Who's that? - Hmm.

They try so hard, but they're gonna lose at the end.

- [soft laugh] - Oh my God.

- Yeah, yeah.

[suspenseful music]

- Okay, canvases, one by one,

please read the artists' name

on the bottom of your skull.

- Old Town Ink.

- Boneface Ink.

- Basilica Tattoo.

- Being a returning vet,

you expect to get the worst canvas.

But you know what? Bring it on.

- Black Spade Tattoo.

- Pinz and Needlez.

- Classic Trilogy Tattoo.

- Hell yeah.

- Artistic Skin Design.

- Unkindness Art.

- What Black Spade doesn't know

is that Erin tattoos a lot of heads.

And I love science.

Double whammy.

- Platypus conquering a lion.

- Allegory Art.

- [soft groan]

- The three tattoos in the line

that were seemingly the most difficult to pull off

are the ones that every single member of the alliance got.

It almost makes me feel like they're onto us.

- You'll have six hours to show your ingenuity

by tattooing a unique new school design.

Based on your work, one shop will be out.

Good luck.

- Really, what we're looking for in these new school tattoos

is for the artists to be really creative.

This is the day no rules apply.

- New school is like exaggerated features.

- Right. -And big focal points.

- It's gonna take ingenuity for these artists to

come up with great, creative, imaginative drawings.

- I want the raccoon to be, like, kind of cutesy,

holding maybe, like, a spell book and a wand.

- Okay.

I definitely don't want to do new school on her ribs.

It's a more vertical look.

You might do better on a vertical body part,

shoulder, thigh.

- I'm getting married next month.

And my fiancé and his in-laws would have a [bleep] fit

if I do anything super visible.

- I'm a firm believer that the--

the piece should fit the body part.

- I have a big piece on my thigh.

- Okay.

- So I'm comfortable doing the other one.

We could do that. - Yeah.

- It's a no-brainer. [chuckles]

Nice try, Black Spade.

Glad your little plan backfired.

- I want the unicorn to have, like, piercings...

- Totally. - A choker.

- I want the New York City backdrop.

- I'm thinking, what's more New York City than

a New York City taxicab?

- Not a big fan of the taxicab.

It's more sort of the buildings.

- Time is always an issue here. - Uhh...

- Give us a little bit of freedom with it,

we're gonna knock it out of the park for you.

- Um. - 'Cause this is what we do.

"I want this, I want this, I want this, I want this."

She's not listening to anything I say.

- Kind of wanted the buildings to come up higher.

- I strongly am against that.

- At least a little bit up.

- We have to stand our ground with this.

Let me do my job!

- No, I don't really like it.

- If we don't get on the same page, we're screwed.

[dramatic music]

♪

- Go past that. - Like past here?

- Past that to his lip. - Okay-okay-okay-okay.

Everything is awful.

We have to squeeze an entire band onto somebody's forearm.

And Dane is losing his mind.

- Nothing exists on the same plane.

- I get it. - Same plane.

- Okay. Stop it.

You're pulling a client right now, where you're like,

"Um, oh, I don't know about that."

You never want canvases to pick apart what you're doing

before you're done doing it.

But you especially don't want

your fellow artist to be doing it.

Wait until I'm, like, done with a thought,

and then I'll ask you what I think about it.

Stop staring at it. You're freaking me out.

- We need to be more forceful with her,

'cause right now she thinks she's in control.

I plan on saying to her,

"If you do not like this, we will tattoo ourselves."

- If you make it look good, she'll like it.

- Just don't be surprised.

Welcome back.

Come look at it so far.

Working on it right now.

Piercings. - Piercings.

- Something smoking in the mouth.

- Okay, looks better. - It looks better.

I'm just kind of tweaking everything right now.

- I love it.

- Sweet, man. That's a curve ball we dodged.

- That looks bad-ass.

- Win!

- Okay, artists.

You have six hours to show your ingenuity

by tattooing a new school design.

And your time begins...

now.

- Sweet! - About time.

Let's do it. - All right.

- Doing a new school tattoo

in a competition setting can be difficult,

because there's a million styles of new school.

- Like that?

- Just a little bit more. Boom.

- These artists are gonna have to use ingenuity,

because we've seen it all.

We're looking for these guys to come out and be original

and take a swing at having fun with a piece of art.

- All right, you ready?

[heavy rock music]

♪

- I'm gonna go away from the grayish-blue for the skin tone.

- For which part? - For the actual unicorn.

It's gonna be tones of brown.

- I just want some color besides the brown.

- We're just trying to make it work with your skin tone.

- The main color I really care for is blue.

- The options that we're talking about is for longevity reasons.

Like we could totally do the blue and it'll look great today.

- It's not gonna last you a long time.

- I don't mean to be a pain in the butt,

I just don't like the brown idea.

- You've just got to trust us.

I thought we were on the same page,

and now you want more things changed.

Oh, she's driving me crazy.

She [bleep] micromanages us.

Jesus Christ.

- [laughs]

- I'm the new school guy.

This is my time to win this challenge.

This is my glory, and this woman is taking it away.

- Thom needs to, like, shut up a little bit.

Walking around and complaining about your canvas,

all of that energy could be served better,

working things out with her.

- Gonna give you a $200,000 tattoo, my dear.

- I just don't like the brown, honestly, guys.

[dramatic music]

♪

- Ah. - You got six hours, bub.

If you can't sit... - No, it's good, it's good.

- Hey, if you can't sit through it, we're gonna have to tell you

to just stop and we're gonna have to tattoo ourselves.

- No, no. Go for it, man. Go for it. I'm--I'm good.

- I don't mean to be like that, but it's serious to us.

It's like 200 grand. - I'll suck it up.

- This kid's chewing his arm off. He's shaking.

I'm about to lose it on this canvas right now.

- What you working on?

- I'm drawing, just in case you can't sit

and we have to tattoo each other.

- I'm not gonna leave on you. - All right.

I've worked so hard in my career to get to this point.

If this kid sends us home,

I don't know what I'll do.

- Three hours to go, guys.

Switch it up.

- Switch!

- Tag, you're it.

- Have at it.

- Thank you.

[heavy rock music]

- Even though neither one of us really does this,

I think this challenge kind of fit our two styles.

- Oh, yeah.

- Noelin specializes in

lots of big color fields, backgrounds.

I'm much more technical, so I went first.

I did all the outline, all the black.

Oh, if we go home on this, I'm breaking some [bleep].

[chuckles]

- Looking clean.

- Cool, thank you.

The second he said his idea,

I had a picture in my mind of how I wanted it to look.

And that's always a good sign.

- So what is that thing again, a rotary?

- It's a rotor from a rotary engine.

- Gotcha, gotcha.

- Even though we were given really difficult canvases,

for the most part, the alliance is killing it.

- And just do a little bit of red.

- Like this?

- Yep. Nailed it.

- One hour left, guys.

[rock music]

[dramatic music]

- Hey, April, I think that background's too much.

This competition is so stressful.

I'm cracking.

I just want to get our [bleep] straight!

Don't be mad.

- Did you put the blue

everywhere you wanted it to go, or no?

- No, not everywhere.

- Do you want to tell me where?

When Dane's stressed out, he just needs to, like,

get away so that I can, like, actually concentrate

on the tattoo and not concentrate on what's going on

in his brain.

If you want to do something to this,

you have to show me, because I don't--

- Okay. - I can't get inside your head.

I don't know what you're talking about.

- That worried face looking loose.

You worried? - No, I'm just watching.

- ES is moving too slow.

Once again, I'm worried that we're gonna run out of time.

This corner right here.

- Yeah, I'm gonna come in with the white.

- That's really not that hard.

It's a cupcake and three blueberries.

- I wanted to put, like, more of a fleshy pink in there

to do some of the caps on their ears, I don't know.

I don't have a clue of what the [bleep] I'm doing.

- Just kind of do what you feel like you need to do.

Not only does Hobo not do new school, Hobo doesn't do color.

It's a lot of pressure on him to finish this tattoo.

Sure, you know what you're doing.

- I'm losing confidence as I'm doing it

and making the wrong palette choices.

Man, we're crumbling, bad.

[rock music]

- Five, four, three, two, one.

That's it, machines down, time is up.

No more ink.

- Whoo-hoo! Finished.

- Dude, that looks phenomenal. - You got through it, dude.

- I told you I'd get through it.

- Yeah. - That is some bad ass tattoo.

- I like your part of it.

I'm not really a huge fan of the other two cats around it.

Yeah, he's green.

- We made it work. - It's what I told you, man.

We'll sell her on the drawing, and she loved it.

- Yeah. I hope this was our time to shine,

and I hope we did it, so.

- I agree. - We dropped the ball.

- No, you did the dope part of the tattoo.

- We win as a team, we lose as a team.

It ain't no you, it ain't no me.

We was upset and fell from the [bleep] beginning.

- You know this is a $200,000 tattoo,

and if you can't do it, get the [bleep] out!

- You put a [bleep] tattoo on her forever.

- I feel very insulted.

- You can be as insulted as you want.

I didn't do the tattoo. You did.

[dramatic music]

- I give it up to you guys, 'cause you gave us a curveball.

- She seemed like a very nice, peaceful little young lady.

- No, no, no. She had control,

but we wanted to work with our canvas.

Unlike you guys, your bedside manner

with your canvas was appalling.

- I definitely lit a spark up under his ass,

but we got him through that whole tattoo,

and he has a great tattoo.

- You go, "This is a $200,000 tattoo,

and if you can't do it, get the [bleep] out!"

- I said-- - Even if he is an asshole,

he still leaves with a tattoo that's perfect.

You, being too nice, made the bad tattoo.

- I should've been an asshole like DJ.

- You should have! - I wasn't an asshole.

- If she was picky, then you should've

told her to shut the [bleep] up and leave,

or sit down so you didn't put a [bleep] tattoo on her forever!

It's on her forever!

No excuse beats forever!

[exciting music]

♪

- Today, you had to prove your ingenuity.

Christian, this challenge was designed

to test your weaknesses.

Basilica Tattoo, you're up first.

- There's a lot of strong

technical aspects to this tattoo.

I like the texture and the flow of the hair and the tail.

But I think that as far as the new school challenge,

just 'cause it's bobblehead and has a little bit of pink

on the outline doesn't really make it new school.

- New school is probably the one thing

that we were most afraid of.

- The drawing itself lacks a little dynamics.

You guys are looking for a win. You're not looking for a get by.

Try to win everything.

- Old Town Ink.

I love how vibrant the space in the background of this thing is.

It's just enough to let you know what's going on.

That shows ingenuity.

- Space is tricky, man.

You did it right by leaving a lot of this open skin

on the astronaut, so you used that contrast to your benefit.

I love the way the tattoo ends.

It doesn't end the same way all around,

but it just has a very fluid flow.

It's a killer tattoo,

and I don't have much to complain about.

- Allegory Arts.

- It's very new school style, has a very cartoony look.

The platypus has a nice, clean outline everywhere.

- That section of this tattoo looks fantastic.

And then everything else on this tattoo just has me like, dammit.

Lion head for me has a ton of problems.

Really, really, really rough outlines.

The black and pink area of the nose,

the outline on that is terrible.

Got to really be mindful of these things, guys,

because a good tattoo is still going home.

- Damn.

- Classic Trilogy Tattoo.

- There are clean lines. There's smooth color blends.

But, man, this drawing is very weird.

The main thing that makes a unicorn a unicorn is a horn.

You would think you would make that

a very stand out, noticeable feature.

- Tried to. She would not budge off of it.

- The sidewalk and the unicorn are the same color,

and the smoky, like, purple background is history in a year.

- We literally tried to explain everything to her,

that we want a tattoo that's gonna last a long time,

and she fought us the entire way.

- Did she pack your bags for you, too?

I really expected this challenge to be, like, you guys have this.

- So did we.

- It's a bummer.

Black Spade Tattoo.

- Love the drawing. Love the color palette choices.

I love everything but the way you tattooed it.

There is not a spot on this thing that is solid.

The background, burgundy's not solid, orange isn't solid.

You put all the right stuff and set yourself up for another W.

You didn't pull through.

- Pinz and Needlez.

- All this light, light skin tone is

really, really close to the guy's already-there skin tone.

As soon as this heals, this thing is gonna be so flat.

- The outline on the drum set, that right side of that cymbal,

what happened? Did the guy sneeze?

- Mid-line, he'd like, switch his body,

and like, rotate his head.

- You guys are hot or cold. You guys cannot just stay warm.

- Artistic Skin Design.

- I don't think it's the best drawing.

If we look at the hand that's playing guitar,

no way, no how do any of those fingers make any sense.

And the thumb coming from behind the guitar is crazy.

- Not a fan of this tattoo.

This blue forcefield is rough.

It's just a sea of washed-out color.

This tattoo looks 20 years old.

You guys have done bright, strong tattoos

that look like stickers. This one does not.

- Boneface Ink.

- The drawing is super challenged.

These are just two heads growing out of this little body.

- This little green guy on the left is totally jacked, man.

One eye is round and outside of the bottom of the eyelid,

and the other eye is squared off and tucked inside of the eyelid.

The finished product has a very amateur feel to it.

It doesn't have the look of

what we know Boneface's finished tattoos look like.

- Unkindness Art.

- There's a lot of really great, shining effects in this tattoo.

The outline throughout is super clean.

You have multiple dynamic light sources coming from

each direction, and it hits the image all in the right spot.

The green glow from the bottom and the blue glow from the top

is intense and it looks really cool.

It definitely shows a lot of ingenuity in drawing it.

- Thank you. - Thank you.

- Okay, guys, time to announce tattoo of the day.

- For me, there's two that stand out, Old Town and Unkindness.

The best thing of the day is in Unkindness with the eyes,

the purple wrinkle, but I don't like the green swirl.

- In the Old Town Tattoo, the way this background

was done, that looks really good.

- I like the really dark background

against the light suit.

- Yeah, that black gives this thing

that believable dimension.

- I'll make it easy. My vote is for Old Town.

- Old Town. - Chris?

- Old Town it is.

- The judges have decided that

the best tattoo of the day goes to Old Town Ink.

All right, guys, as the jury of peers,

you must now deliberate and put one shop up for elimination.

Head on back to the loft.

- We know who's on the top.

Who do you think's on the bottom?

- We had perfect application, they said, so--

- Perfect application?

- It was a flat, boring-ass tattoo--

- But-- - And all you did

was blame everything on the canvas.

That was hard to hear, man.

- Oh, I'm sorry, I guess I'll just treat

my client like [bleep] and I'll win tattoo of the day.

- Well, maybe you'll do a good tattoo, then,

I don't know. - Oh, yeah?

- Or maybe you can go back to Snitchita

and go tell on everybody else like you did with these guys.

- Oh, I'm sorry!

I'm just gonna break the rules and I'm gonna win from now on!

- Dude, you're just gonna do whatever you can

to divert attention from anything you've done.

- We [bleep] said that [bleep] was dull.

We said it was dull. - Bull[bleep].

You lawyered everything. - Okay.

- You threw everybody under the bus.

Since I've been here, you've done nothing--

- And you've only been here one challenge.

- Yeah, and that's all it took for me to not like how you work.

- Oh, I'm sorry.

[exciting music]

- We're here as the jury of peers

to determine who had the worst tattoo.

Who do you guys think's going to the bottom?

- Ours. - Yeah, ours.

- I felt like the composition from the beginning,

we didn't take the time we needed to take

to make sure we had a solid foundation.

- I don't hate the tat.

- That middle cat's pretty solid to me.

- Yeah, it is pretty solid.

The color saturation is actually pretty smooth,

and I think some other people got ripped up

for technical applications as well.

- Black Spade, I feel like you guys had

a really awesome drawing, but the technical--

like, there's just errors throughout it.

- Well, I don't think we deserve to be on the bottom.

- The technical application in

this one falls way short of good design.

- But they didn't beat us up as much as Artistic.

They beat you guys up for the bland color.

- Those fingers are really bad, though.

- They're zombie fingers.

- I think the only thing really wrong

with the fingers is the thumb.

- It's coming from the wrong side.

- Yeah, if the thumb came from the top and not the bottom.

- I don't think it's 100% as cut and dried as we're making it.

- I think we learned that there's

no guarantee you're going out. You never know.

- Yeah, very true.

- Could be anybody.

[dramatic music]

- Ingenuity day.

We have to decide who we're putting up for elimination.

- First impression of Classic Trilogy's

is like, what the [bleep] is this?

- It's still debatable that's a horse.

- And look at the vantage point of the city.

It's not right. - For sure.

- Can't let Boneface off the hook.

The little [bleep]ed up green cat has cat eyes.

The big one-eyed turd cat in the middle, he's tripping.

- He found daddy's catnip.

- This thing is all over the place.

- You guys were particularly hard on Black Spade's tattoo.

- The technical aspects of Black Spade's were so bad,

I feel like they've got to be in the bottom.

- I think Black Spade does a better drawing

and better color play versus Artistic Skin Design.

Muted green with this huge forcefield of terrible blue.

It's the most strange thing.

- And look at that hand playing guitar, dude.

- Ugh. - What's interesting is

that the jury of peers is gonna vote someone,

and they have been tending

to vote people that they're threatened by--

- Instead of who they really think should go home.

- Instead of who deserves to go home,

so that is gonna be interesting.

- Yeah. - Want to bring 'em in?

- So who do you think are the other two?

- Normally it's pretty clear on at least the bottom two.

This time, it's, like, so across the board, it's a mess.

- Right now it's looking very confusing.

- Yeah.

[dramatic music]

♪

- All right, jury of peers.

What shop are you putting up for elimination?

- We, as the jury of peers, voted down Boneface Ink.

- All right, we'll see Boneface Ink,

Black Spade Tattoo, and Artistic Skin Design.

- Okay. - See y'all downstairs.

[dramatic music]

- You guys ready? - Let's go.

- Everybody ready? - Yeah.

♪

- Today you had to show ingenuity

by tattooing new school.

Based on your work, one shop will be packing their machines.

Time to check with the jury of peers.

Why did you put Boneface Ink in the bottom?

- This one was pretty apparent.

You know, they thought it was the worst one.

We kind of all did, too.

- It was unanimous? - Almost.

- Thom? - I voted for Black Spade.

Their tattoo application was a little worse than this to me.

- I will say that Black Spade had the perfect canvas,

the perfect drawing, and it still led to a bad tattoo.

- I don't agree.

There was some saturation issues, but the lines look good.

- If you can't see that the lines aren't good,

then you might not need to be here either.

- I don't feel like our lines were bad.

- Our tattoo's dope.

- ES and Ruck, my gut is to send this tattoo home.

Technical application is the number one most important thing

every single god damn challenge, and this [bleep] is jacked.

Scratchy lines, scribbly everywhere, nothing is smooth.

- You did mention drawing is gonna be a strong thing here.

- ES, I get it, man.

But with solid application, you are fighting them for the win.

You get that? - Of course.

- The Artistic Skin Design piece, the problem for me

is the contrast on this thing. It's hard to read.

- I personally don't think that

our tattoo would need that much help.

- If you want it to be anatomically correct,

you need a laser.

[quiet chuckling]

- I don't think that our tattoo

is that bad that you need to laser it off.

I understand that there is-- - You don't understand

if you're even saying anything. - Yes, I do.

I understand that there's anatomical errors.

I feel very insulted when you

say that you want to laser our tattoo off.

- You can be as insulted as you want.

I didn't do the tattoo. You did.

You're only fighting yourself.

- All right, time to determine who's going home.

- I mean, this is a tough call for me.

Worst tattoo of the day, from ten feet away, is the cat.

Worst tattoo of the day up close is that cupcake.

- For me, Black Spade is readable.

It's a new school design. My vote is for Boneface Ink.

- Boneface Ink.

- I'm gonna go with Boneface Ink.

- The judges have decided.

Boneface Ink, you do not have what it takes to be Master Shop.

- I know that you have the strengths that we're not seeing,

but it just didn't work out.

- Please pack your machines and move out.

[dramatic music]

♪

- And the fat lady sang, baby.

- We did the worst tattoo of the day,

but we're not the worst shop.

That's a rough one, bro.

I just wish that we went out on a good tattoo.

- I feel you. - But we let them win.

- But you know what, G?

[bleep] soldiers. The pressure, period,

of this competition, it affected everybody.

- It's a grind. It's an endurance competition.

It's more than just tattoos.

- Love, G.

- That's all, folks.

- We out!

announcer: On the next episode of "Ink Master."

- There's a cool kid club here,

and I think he's not the only one in the house that sees it.

- Christian came in, and he's already been to the finale.

Where are they gonna pull other teams from now?

Everybody from the finale, or winners?

- It took somebody years of their life to paint this thing.

- You guys got six hours.

- I don't want to be stressed anymore.

- Well, you're not even letting me finish.

- You dropped the ball, man.

- You basically want to throw it at me, like--

- This is my shop. This is Black Spade.

- You have to get superhuman in here to make it to the end.

- Give this to somebody you want out of here.

- I would not have expected this from you guys.

- Y'all are insane.