Original subtitles

On the last episode of Ink Master Shop Wars.

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

Don't help the veterans.

Another veteran shop returned with a target on its back.

Bone face and oboe ink.

Hope you plan on getting blood on them Yeezy boots.

You going to put them on there?

Shots fired.

Did you try to people, or did you not?

What does this have to do with art?

I'm not an artist.

I tattoo.

That's the .

stupidest thing I've ever heard in my whole life.

You can art your ass all you want.

I'm here to win.

In the elimination tattoo, shots crumbled as tensions between teammates intensified.

Tap it with water.

Oh, yes.

Just stop.

Just whip out.

Don't go circular.

I don't have time to finesse.

Not there, but on the tip, yes.

What are you doing, Tom?

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.

In the elimination, Black Spade Tattoo, Classic Trilogy Tattoo, and House of Monkey were the

bottom three shots.

Black Spade Tattoo.

The bottom is such a mess.

That 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.

Eight shops remain to take on returning veteran shops, but only one will earn a $200

,000 prize and the title of master shop.

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 got to do something different.

Yeah.

But I remember when meeting you, 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 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 in the bottom in the

mud.

Yeah, we got to pull that jam 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 going to go above and beyond.

balls to the wall.

Yeah.

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.

And 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.

Great, now we're going to start getting finalists in here.

That's got me nervous.

Last time I competed, I got completely robbed.

I got a lot of problems with this tattoo.

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

It's surreal.

It's really up.

Aesthetically, it's pleasing.

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

This tattoo came out super soft, super smooth.

It's his expertise at work.

You're a definite competitor here.

Who has the jury determined deserves a spot in the top two?

Clean rock one.

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 Nolan 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 going to 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 return.

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.

OK.

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.

Time begins now.

This bubble wrap art, they have to inject ink into a huge sheet of bubble wrap one bubble

at a time.

A loose pixelation effect.

Yep, that went everywhere.

Hey, maybe we can play on the fact that Nunez is compared to Skulls and Roses and do a skull

puking roses.

Perfect.

That might actually be kind of cool.

It's like, oh, blah.

Yeah.

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

The only risk is to keep going with the animated team, 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, because that's the thing.

We got called out for being stale last time.

I also thought, like, some faith piece.

Yeah, because it's going to be something completely different.

We're going to do a play on the original sin, the Garden of Eden, the snake and the apple.

What colors?

And the red apple, so we already got the red.

I resort back to faith simply because it's a driving force in my life.

It 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 veignet.

Exactly.

Perfect.

Well, I was thinking of a hand holding something.

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

We got another chance.

Things aren't going the way we wanted.

Let's do something different, man.

Let's shock these mother .

I'm going to be yellow and black.

ES has a vision.

So you know what?

Even though we had problems, I'm going to go with it.

If we can work together, we can knock this thing out.

Four more hours.

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 threat.

Oh, it looks cool.

I like it.

So in front of the snow, I just have the best idea.

White out.

We want to have snowflakes fall through the piece to give it a little movement.

We can use whiteout.

It's going to be a really cool, ingenious way to do snowflakes that no one else thought of.

Oh, they used the whiteout.

Clever.

It's got a good look.

Thank you.

Two hours remaining.

Two hours.

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

This is definitely a lot trickier than we thought it was going to 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 has been, like, crazy weird.

I was hoping it was going to 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 going to be a dick, you've got blue 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.

What did you see?

Nothing.

Yeah, that ain't bad, Billy.

That horrible, man.

This thing is jacked.

I came here to tattoo not to do the last challenges.

Pop your hand.

Yeah, got it.

Four, three, two, one.

That's it.

Time's up.

It only looks more like puke now.

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 going to come in with jokes?

I'm not into it.

it.

OK, 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 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 a 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 whiteout so we made it snow.

They actually said you couldn't draw on the front of it.

And so I kind of think they broke the rules.

You could use the tools that you had.

Ingenuity's a bitch.

Tom, you're saying that allegory should be disqualified?

Yeah, they broke the rules.

Does everybody else here feel that way about it?

I don't know.

No.

It's fine.

It's cool.

Nobody else give a ?

All right, let's move along.

Tom 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 think of it doesn't mean it's breaking a rule.

It just means I'm smarter than you are.

Black Speed.

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.

OK, 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 gray, 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.

So apparently Nunez has no sense of humor, and we can't do anything funny.

Unkindness art.

The rabbit in anatomy stands out really strong.

Using the cool tones for the shading in 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.

Pins and needles.

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 a nice shape on both sides, and it looks very sharp.

Artistic skin design.

Do you think

This is very legible.

I thought we should have 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 this pixelated dot.

She ends up having a very squared off, weird shaped chin and cyclops look and feel.

Just falls a little short.

Boneface, Inc.

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.

That background's too much.

Dane is losing his mind.

Don't be mad.

This kid's chewing his arm off.

We're going to have to tell you to stop it.

We're going to have to tattoo ourselves.

I'm about to lose it.

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 class challenge player.

For sure.

Overall, I think most of the field did pretty good for a new medium.

Unkindness art, kind of 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 B.

Today, they turn 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.

Well, you want to make a decision?

I'm pretty set.

You got it?

I'm good.

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

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 locker.

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 got to turn it around and spin it right back at you.

You better be ready.

You better have your pants on tight.

I want that money.

My man.

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 the returning veteran artist, it's on your shop to prove that you deserve to

be here by overcoming your weaknesses.

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

Now, there's no better test of ingenuity

than a new school tattoo.

Woo!

That's in my 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.

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 show them, 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 going to 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.

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 going to 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.

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?

Your ribs?

Yes.

OK.

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.

This is the one we don't want.

I want a mad scientist holding mechanics tools on my head.

On your head?

Yeah.

Your timeline on the head is like half of anything else on your body.

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.

This is why I hate new school.

These completely wacky ideas.

Don't stick me with that stupid platypus.

Who's that?

It's like watching the first day of Chess Club.

They try so hard, but they're kind of loose at the end.

Oh, my god.

That was the hardest one you saved.

That face.

I'll get that head to it.

Yeah, yeah.

Okay, canvases, one by one, please read the artist's name on the bottom of your skull.

Old Town Ink.

Bone Face Ink.

She's the wizard.

She wants the ribs.

That's the best kind of tricky.

Basilica Tattoo.

Being a returning vet, you expect to get the worst canvas.

But you know what?

Bring it on.

Black Spade Tattoo.

Pins and Needles.

Classic Trilogy Tattoo.

Hell yeah.

Artistic skin design.

I knew that was going to happen.

Unkindness art.

What Black Spade doesn't know is that Erin tattoos a lot of heads, and I love science.

Double whammy.

Platypus conquering the line.

Allegory art.

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 artist to be really creative.

This is the day that no rules apply.

New school is like exaggerated features, big focal points.

It's going to take ingenuity for these artists to come off with great, creative, imaginative

drawings.

I want the recommend to be like kind of cutesy, holding maybe like a spell book and a wand.

OK.

I definitely don't want to do new school on the 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 fiance and his in-laws would have a bit if I do anything

super visible.

I'm a firm believer that the piece should fit the body part.

I have a big piece on my thigh.

OK.

So I'm comfortable doing the other one.

You could do that.

Yeah.

That's a no-brainer.

Nice try, Black Spade.

I'm glad your little plan backfired.

I want the unicorns to have piercings, a choker.

I want the New York City backdrop.

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

I'm not a big fan of the taxi cab.

It's more so the buildings.

Time is always an issue here.

Give us a little bit of freedom with it, we're going to knock it out of the park for you.

Because 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.

I wanted the buildings to come up higher.

I strongly am against that.

At least a little bit up here.

We have to stay in our ground with this.

Let me do my job.

No, I don't really like that.

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

Go past that.

Past that first leg.

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.

OK.

Stop it.

You're pulling a client right now where you're like, 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, because right now she thinks she's in control.

I plan on saying to her, if you do not like this, we will tattoo ourselves.

She'll 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.

Something smoking in the mouth.

OK, looks better that way.

It looks better.

I'm just kind of tweaking everything right now.

I love it.

Sweet, man.

That's a curveball we dodged.

That looks badass.

Win.

OK, artists, you have six hours to show your ingenuity by tattooing a new school design.

And your time begins now.

Sweet.

Let's do it.

All right.

Doing a new school tattoo in a competition setting can be difficult because there's a million

styles in new school.

Like that?

Just a little bit more.

Boom.

These artists are going to 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?

I'm going to go away from the grayish blue for the skin tone.

For which part?

For the actual unicorn.

It's going to be tones of brown.

I just want some color besides 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 going to 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 just got to trust us.

I thought we were on the same page.

Oh, wait, you want more things changed?

Oh, it's driving me crazy.

She micromanages us.

Jesus Christ.

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.

Tom 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.

I'm gonna give you a $200,000 tattoo, my dear.

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

You got six hours of love.

If you can't sit through it, we're going to have to tell you to stop it.

We're going to have to tattoo ourselves.

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.

Is she working on it?

I'm trying just in case you can't sit and we have to tattoo each other.

I'm not going to 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.

What do you have at it?

Thank you.

Even though neither one of us really does this, I think this challenge kind of fit our two

styles.

Oh, yeah.

Nolan 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 .

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.

Let's do a little bit of red.

Like this?

Yep, nailed it.

One hour left, guys.

Hey, April.

I think that background's too much.

This competition is so stressful, I'm cracking.

I just want to get our 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 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, I can't get inside

your head.

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

Got a worried face looking, though.

You worried?

No, I'm just watching.

ES is moving too slow.

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

This corner right here.

Yeah, I'm going to come in with the white.

It's really not that hard.

It's a cupcake and three blueberries.

I wanted to put more of a fleshy pink in there to do some of the caps of the ears hiding.

I don't have a clue of what the 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.

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

Shane, 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.

3, 2, 1.

That's it.

Machines down.

Time is up.

No more in.

Woo-hoo!

Finished.

Dude, that looks phenomenal.

You got through it, dude.

I told you I get through it.

Yeah, man.

That is some badass tattoo.

At least you're a part of it.

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

Yeah, we've grown.

We made it work.

That's what I told you, man.

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

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 were set to fail from the beginning.

You know this is a $200,000 tattoo, and if you can't do it, get the out.

You put a .

tattoo on her forever.

I feel very insulted.

You can be as insulted as you want.

I didn't do the tattoo you did.

I give it up to you guys, because you gave us a curveball.

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

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 .

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 have been an asshole like TJ.

You should have.

I wasn't an asshole.

If she was picky, then you should have told her to shut the up and leave or sit down so you

didn't put a tattoo on her forever.

It's on her forever.

No excuse beats forever.

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 because the bobblehead 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, Inc.

I love how vibrant the space and 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-skinned astronaut, so you use 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.

It has a very

The 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, damn it.

Lionhead, 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.

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 standout, noticeable feature.

Tried to, she would not budge off of it.

The sidewalk and the unicorn are the same color.

And the smokey-like purple background is history in a year.

We literally tried to explain everything to her, that we want a tattoo that's going to 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 is not solid.

Orange isn't solid.

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

You didn't pull through.

Pins and needles.

Light, light skin tone is really, really close to the guy's already there skin tone.

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

The outline on the drum set, that right side of that cymbal, what happened?

Did the guy sneeze?

Midline, 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.

Well, guys, 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 force field 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 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 then the blue glow from the top is intense, and it looks

really cool.

It definitely shows a lot of ingenuity in drawing this.

Thank you.

Thank you.

OK, guys, time to announce the 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.

The eyes, the purple wrinkles, 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 Inc.

All right, guys, as the jury appears, you must now deliberate and put one shot up for elimination.

Head on back to the lot.

We know who's on the top.

Who do you think's on the bottom?

We had perfect application, they said.

Perfect application.

That was a flat, boring-ass tattoo.

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 .

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 going to break the rules, and I'm going to win from now on.

Dude, you're just going to do whatever you can to divert attention from anything you've done.

We said it was dull.

Bull .

You lawyered everything.

You threw everybody under the bus.

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

You've only been here one challenge.

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

We're here as the jury appears to determine who had the worst tattoo.

Who do you guys think is 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 tech.

That middle cap'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 a bottom.

Technical application in this one falls way short of the 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.

Like if the thumb came from the top and not the bottom.

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

One thing we learned, man, there's no guarantee you're going out.

You never know.

Yeah.

It could be anybody.

Ingenuity day, we have to decide who we're putting up for elimination.

First impression of .

Classic Trilogies is like, what the is this?

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

And look at the vantage point of the city.

It's not right.

For sure.

Can't let bone face off the hook.

The little 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 are so bad, I feel like they 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 force field of terrible blue.

It's the most strange thing.

Look at that hand playing guitar, dude.

Ugh.

What's interesting is that the jury appears who's going to vote someone, and they have been

tending to vote people that they're threatened by.

Instead of who they really think can go home.

Instead of who deserves to go home.

So that is going to be interesting.

Yeah.

Want to bring them in?

So who do you think of the other two?

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

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

It could be us.

Right now, it's, like, very confusing.

Yeah.

All right, jury appears.

What shop are you putting up for elimination?

We, as the jury appears, voted down Boneface Inc.

All right, we'll see Boneface Inc, Black Spade Tattoo, and artistic skin design.

OK.

See y'all downstairs.

You guys ready?

Let's go.

Very ready.

Let's go.

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 up here.

Why did you put bone face 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.

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 were some saturation issues, but the lines are 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 goddamn challenge.

And this is jacked.

Scratchy lines, scribbly everywhere.

Nothing is smooth.

You did mention drawing is going to be a strong thing here.

Yes.

I get it, man.

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

You get that?

Of course.

The artistic skin design piece.

The problem for me is the contrast in 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.

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 could 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, it's a tough call for me.

Worst tattoo of the day from 10 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, Inc.

Boneface, Inc.

I'm going to go with Boneface, Inc.

The judges have decided Boneface, Inc.

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.

In the fat latest scene, baby.

We did the worst tattoo of the day, but we're not the worst shot.

It was a rough one, bro.

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

I feel you.

But we never win.

But you know what, G?

We sold it.

The pressure period of this competition, it affected everybody.

It's a grind.

It's an endurance competition.

It's more than just tattoos.

It's all focused.

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 going to 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 got the ball, man.

You instantly want to throw it at me like, this is my shop.

This is Black Spade.

You have to be a 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.