NEOhio

I do judge the men on their clothing. I wanted Cleen Rock to put a shirt with sleeves on. Some of them do not put together a look that screams competent artistic professional. Both male and female tattoo artists tend to favor going with a "look" that lets you know they're not a bank teller. Heavily tattooed people sometimes show more skin than is normally seen. Whatever. It says nothing about their character other than they like tattoos.

The remaining artists are all stronger overall in my non-expert opinion than Amanda. But both of Team Cleen's tattoos looked skewed somehow and hers didn't. Yeah it kind of had a bandit thing going but.... I agree with the comments that it's obvious they are keeping the team numbers even. It's irritating. I hope we get away from this team concept next season. Im not even sure the return of the Zen coach Anthony could get me to watch more coaching.

I really dislike the coaches being able to protect one of their players. It means we may get an Ink Master at the end that has done fewer tattoos than their competitors. Maybe they would have done badly in those styles or under the pressure? We will never know. I think Tiffer is pretty great but I haven't seen that much work from him. He keeps getting to sit out. Can he do a pinup style mermaid? Or would he hide the face or jack an arm? Sure the old style do Traditional, do Japanese, do a portrait was a repetitive season but by this time in the old seasons I knew who was well rounded and who wasn't and who faded under pressure. Now I'm still not clear on everyone's strengths even the standouts. There simply needs to be more tattoos by the contestants and less by the coaches. I know Cleen and Christian can tattoo. Oh and I agree with 2727, bye Jimmy's cap.

I really liked the aliens vs dinosaurs tattoo. It was an epic battle with multiple fights going on. Neither Stacy or Austin's blew me away nor were either the worst things we've seen on IM. I think Stacy has been improving and like others have said if she'd gotten a little help she might have won. At least she had a plan and an idea where her light source was coming from. They have gotten rid of one of the weaker tattooers. But there's one less person to balance out those with negative and argumentative attitudes. So not sure it made the team stronger.

Sad that a competitor had to leave for health reasons. I think Oba could have lasted at least a few more rounds. Especially given some of those wrist tattoos. I honestly didn't think the dragon was that bad. Given how the body was compressed to fit the space the odd hanging talons didn't jump out at you. What I did disagree with was the Cleen/Christian decision at the beginning. Sometimes I just don't get when the judges go on about a sticker tattoo. Both new skool designs were well executed. What made one more "sticker" quality than the other?

I agree with hkit, I think Dave tries to judge more by the challenge. Ollie and Nunez have some biases that show up every year. Yes, we know your thing is X. However we're dealing with Y tonight. Can we focus. Strangely I'm finding Cleen a better coach than I expected. I'm sure it'll dissolve into shouting on both sides.

I did like the comment about no Zen coaches this year. Yup, no Anthony this year. Just gonna be loud.

That pinup was messed up. I like Roly, he seems like a nice guy. But he can't draw and artistically he was no where close to Jason. Yes there was some skin trauma, it should heal. That pinup won't. The show looked pretty rigged when Deanna left, this seemed blatant. I agree with Galloway Cave, go back to regular seasons.

I think the flash challenge highlighted Deanna's artistic skill an design talent. So the ending was really disappointing.

I think Deanna may have a better sense of design overall than the other remaining artists. Her freehanded tattoo was great. However, I don't think she has the depth of tattooing experience to make it to the final. Her comment on never having done (or being familiar with the mask ?) highlighted this. I kind of miss the old formulaic American traditional week, Japanese week, portrait week format that put all the contestants through their paces at the same time. Yeah, it got stale, but I felt I had a better sense of what the artists could really do compared to what they say they can do.