Friday, February 28, 2014

Ink master... maybe whine master?


It’s that time again!  Time for my favorite tattoo competition shows of all time… The glory that is known as Ink Master.  This is the only show about tattoos, hosted by someone who clearly is not an expert in the industry at all.   Sorry Dave, but even strutting out your industry leading judges does not make you an expert.  However I do have a lot of respect for Chris and Oliver so going into season four I’m willing to overlook it.

After introducing America’s pick, Kyle!  Yes I voted for him.  Dave explains that Kyle is exempt from the first elimination challenge and has a secured spot till next week.  Now Kyle made it pretty far in the last season so it is fair to say that he has already earned his spot on the show right?  Well being told what the first challenge was, a lot of the contestants did not think so.  I don’t know about you but to get to the final four, and tattooing live on stage, I think you can say he did his first round already.  The pettiness comes from the fact that there are 17 total tattooist and only 16 available shops, so the contestants sans Kyle must compete for the remaining 15 spots.  The competition: Tattooing convention style.  Literally hundreds of people pouring into the studio to be tattooed immediately, there are no comforts, loud noises and tons of distractions.  Still there are artists that bank their career’s on being able to tattoo in a convention setting.

The convention starts and it seems like everyone has a new strategy.  Some people are staying small and going for quantity and others are just putting out two to three solid pieces.  I’d go for the latter just because, if you are going to tattoo someone you tattoo them not rush through them.

The thing that annoys me about these shows is that there are so many contestants to really go in-depth on any one.  Basically you judge them two different ways, you either just look at the art and not care about the person, or you get smacked in the feels by interviews.  Example?  Let’s take the two biggest ones, Halo and Gentle Jay.  Halo is a cancer survivor, he decided to forgo chemo therapy in order to keep tattooing, see you just get your feels kicked in the nuts right?  Like really dude?!  You want some happy for this guy.  Then there is Gentle Jay who we shall now and forever more refer to as mountain douche.  Seriously, this grizzly Adams look alike is killing me.  Throughout the whole episode he is arrogant and basically acting like he is god’s gift to tattooing.  I’m going to put it out there, what I’ve seen so far, you wouldn’t be allowed to touch me with a needle.  Somehow I don’t think he’d care anyway.

Anyway, since there are so many artists I think I’m just going to have to give you a link at the bottom and you can look into it when you get a chance, because let’s face it, I don’t feel like writing 16 mini bios.  That being said, lets fast forward to the judging of the convention style tattoos… I’d say 80 percent of the room gets full on kicked in the nuts.  These tats are rough, and that’s being kind.  Out of 15 contestants, remember Kyle already had a shop, only 5 are guaranteed a shop.  The rest must tattoo again this time, a tattoo they feel encompasses who they are as an artist.

The major stand outs in the shops, in my opinion, were again Halo who completely redeemed himself with a beautiful and whimsical faire and Damon who wants to do a day of the dead girl, but his lack of experience seems to squash his 4 years of art school.  I would have totally rocked that faire back piece by the way!  I have to say that the other eight tattoos really didn’t excite me at all.  Most were kind of a yawn and defiantly showed me what the middle is going to be comprised of.

After a heated discussion, not by the judges, but the contestants, the real disgusting personalities seem to unmask themselves to display a bunch of arrogant and self-serving grossness.  Ewwww.  At this point, sadly, you almost don’t want to look at these boring tattoos.  Lord help the judges this season.  Still someone has to go home and, for his lack of experience and fundamentals Damon is selected to go home.  Still think that Kyle hadn’t earned his shop Damon?  Let’s hope for some awesome new work next week.                     

As promised here's the link... Go kyle!

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