Really, portraits? That's a bad idea.

Well folks, it's another Wednesday, which means another review(?) of the new episode of Best Ink.  I got up this morning planning to put my kid on the bus and then sit down with a cup (or 3) of coffee and watch the new episode.  Well, I got my coffee and turned on the TV only to find that it hadn't recorded- crap.  It also wasn't on 'on demand' yet.  A few hours later I broke down and spent the $2.99 and watched it on iTunes- not because I couldn't wait, but because I didn't want you, my loyal readers, to have to wait. And, lemme tell ya, it was well worth the 3 bucks.

The show started with a short segment of everyone talking about how much Jessica sucked and how they're glad she's gone- pretty funny.  This week, what they refer to as the flash challenge was really more of a life drawing challenge.  Nicky, my new person to bash, said some shit about having broken his glasses this morning and not being able to see the model.  What the fuck?  You travelled away from home for however many weeks it took to shoot this dopey show, and you didn't think to bring an extra pair of glasses just in case?  Alexis wins the competition and is rewarded by being the only contestant to get to vote on the bottom 3.  I would love to be in that position- I'd vote for the bottom 6, have everyone go home, and have the damn show be over.  Then there's a scene where they're all sitting around talking and Kyle pops up and says something like "Joe always says things like it needs more black.  Fuck his opinion".  WOW!  Now, I'm not defending Joe here just because he's my friend, and I certainly don't think that he needs me to defend him, but he's an excellent tattooer, and Kyle, well, not so much.  Maybe Kyle should try to learn anything he can from Joe during the course of the show- just sayin'.  OK, Kyle, from what I've seen on the show, your tattoos need more fuckin' black!  They need help in other ways too, but they could definitely use more black.  My personal opinion is that when you think you've got enough black in a tattoo, put some more in.  

They're told that they're gonna be doing portraits and Charlie has a little tear-fest because she knows she shouldn't be doing a portrait.  As someone who does a good number of portraits, I know that it is not something for everyone- it takes a special kind of crazy to do portraits properly.  I almost feel bad for the people getting the portraits.  If ya want a good portrait, you go to someone that DOES portraits, you don't get tattooed by someone that you are stuck with on a TV show.  Charlie gets upset when she finds out that she will be working from a passport photo- but the photo has been blown up, so it's not tiny.  She apparently doesn't realize that for someone that has never done a portrait, she kinda lucked out.  It's an old photo, and there's not a whole lotta detail, making it a little easier to duplicate the photo. They're given 5 hours to complete a portrait- that's reasonable.  I generally tell people that most portraits take me anywhere between 3 and 5 hours to complete.  Midway through, Joe does a walk around and looks at everyone's tattoos.  At this point, Jon's tattoo looks the best.  We get a cutaway to Kyle saying "I'm not all that concerned with what Joe has to say".  You're diggin' your own grave buddy.  

Again with the mad face from Joey at the beginning of the judging- hell yeah!  Joe lays into Kyle and tells him that he has a bad attitude, then blows up at the whole bunch of 'em.  I love that he uses the term 'new fangled tattoo guys'.  I can't even tell ya how awesome the explosion from Joe was- you gotta see it to fully enjoy it- I rewound it a few times.  At the end of this I'm gonna post a link to a video on the Oxygen website that has a great segment from last nights show, that shows Joe losing his shit on Kyle- you gotta go watch it because it's fuckin' awesome. A river of tears from Charlie who actually did a really nice tattoo considering that it was her first portrait.  Jon and Alexis were the top 2, with Jon coming out on top.  Alexis voted Kyle, Charlie, and London in the bottom 3.  Nicky should have been in the bottom 3 but he's buddies with Alexis, so that didn't happen.  Kyle goes home, but Nicky did the weakest tattoo by far, and should have been the one to go home.

Now, this is awesome and you should all go watch it:  VIDEO
This is the kinda stuff that should have been kept in the show.  I wanna see all of this stuff, and I'm guessing that other people would enjoy it as well.

Now, since the episode was about portraits, here's some shameless self promotion- some of my favorite portraits that I've done over the years: