And the winner is...

OK, so last night was the final episode of Best Ink...

I can't believe I made it all the way through to the end.  It's the first Tattoo (un)reality show I have ever watched, and again, I would not have watched a single episode if it weren't for the fact that Joe is on it.  Ever since the first stupid tattoo show aired, I have had customers constantly asking, "Do you watch (insert dumb tattoo show name)".  My answer (up till now), has always been NO.  Then, they always ask why not.  I start my answer to their question with a question- "What do you do for a living?"  If they reply "I'm an electrician", I say something like, "Well, after doing electrical work all day, do you want to go home and watch it on TV?"  Most of the time they get it.  I do though finally understand the reason people are attracted to garbage like this.  The last couple of episodes have been a let down for me.  Why? Because there were no tears, no meltdowns, and no Joey yellin' at people.  I guess I enjoyed the dumb ass drama- CRAP, I really thought I was better than that.

At the beginning of the show there was a little clip of Alexis saying that whoever wins tonight, wins Best Ink and what a big deal that is.  Lemme clue ya in on something Alexis- it's not that big of a deal.  A week from now, nobody's gonna give a fuck, and a month from now, most of 'em won't even remember.  Plus if you go to a tattoo convention and start telling people "I won Best Ink", no one is gonna fuckin' care- at least not anyone with 2 bits of brain to rub together.

There is no (non)flash challenge.  Instead, there is a portfolio review with some lady from Tattoo Magazine.  This segment of the show was totally unexciting.  She didn't look at their portfolios- she looked at a couple of shitty drawing from each of them and then the segment was over.  I'll tell ya what I would have liked to have seen- Joe reviewing their tattoo portfolios.  I've seen it happen, and it's always fun.  I have been at conventions with Joe when someone walked up to his booth and said something like "I'm a really big fan of your work, and I'd like for you to look at my portfolio".  At which point, I've heard Joe answer with something like "If I look at your work, I'm gonna be brutally honest, so do you still want me to look at it?"  Fuckin' classic!  I would have loved to see Joe rip into their work.

They each have to do 3 tattoos for the final Ink Challenge- all based on love, and they're going to be tattooing people that they have already tattooed during the course of the show.  Not too much to report on the actual tattooing, but at the end of the 3rd tattoo, there is a shot of London, with his gloves still on, picking up his drink and taking a sip- FUCKIN' NASTY!

London wins the competition, which is cool.  Of the 3 final contestants, he is the one that I wanted to see win.

OK, on to real life...

Still working on my buddy Joey's beer labels, and I've been having a lot of fun doing them.  There was about a half a second where I thought to myself "why did I stop doing illustration work", and then I remembered- Art Directors are as bad, if not worse than tattoo customers.  To all my awesome customers- don't get me wrong here- you're great, but there are some customers that are not so great.  Both Art Directors and Tattoo Clients can ugly-up a design real quickly.  You do something that you really like, and then they make changes to it that you absolutely hate.  But, the bottom line is that they're the ones paying for it, so ya do what they want.  Well, in this case, Joey isn't paying for these (I wouldn't take money from a friend that I've known for 13+ years anyway), and he is pretty much just letting me do what I want, which is why they've been so much fun to work on.

Here's a finished pic of the Mud Cat label that I posted an in progress pic of last week:

I also did a small design- a Devil's Fiddle Brewing logo for the necks of the bottles.  I don't know why this thing looks so bright here- it's actually all pretty dull colors- I guess it has something to do with the fact that I had to convert it from CMYK to RGB to upload it...

And, here's a progress pic of the label for Hoppy McBitterton.  I'm hoping to finish this one up tonight, then I need to start thinking about what I want to do for the last one- El Heffe.