‘Ink Master’ season 6, episode 14 review: Does having power help Dave Kruseman, Duffy Fortner?
We have made it to the top 5 on “Ink Master” season 6 and we have a really great group of artists competing for the title. The finale is quickly approaching (only two weeks away!) making tonight’s tattoos more important then ever. After losing Tyler last week (you can read our interview with him over at the link here), it was clear that we are at the point of the competition that one bad tattoo can send you home.
Flash challenge: The artists are being tested on precision this week and to help showcase their talents the artists will be creating designs using only nails. They each have about 250,000 nails to create their large scale design on a piece of drywall and this seems like a challenge designed to destroy the artists hands more then show precision after hammering in thousands of nails.
Kruseman was in the bottom last week for playing it too safe with his tattoo, but this week he’s here to win and created a giant bat out of nails that looked so super cool. Duffy designed a beautiful peacock feather that looked so delicate you would never suspect it was made of nails. Matt gave us a strong image detailing what it takes to make a nail and it was one of the judges favorites. Craig and Chris had big bold ideas that felt a little unfinished, but if they had 10 more hours to work on their pieces they would’ve blown everyone away. For us the clear winners of the day were Duffy and Kruseman, we loved both of these designs, but Kruseman was able to edge out Duffy for the win.
Elimination tattoo: We have been waiting for portrait week to show up on “Ink Master” this season and here we are! These portraits are all active military that are about to be deployed, so there’s a lot of pressure to get it right. With all of the flash challenge winners going home the past few weeks, we were hoping that Kruseman is going to break the jinx, but when he admits that he’s rarely done portraits, we are immediately worried for him. We are also worried for Duffy since she is his apprentice and hasn’t done a lot of portraits either. With Kruseman’s lack of experience with portraits, the other artists felt that he gave himself the worst canvas to tattoo, but Chris Nunez points out that Kruseman picked the portrait that had the least amount of face he had to tattoo.
Judging: Kruseman and Duffy had a tough time with their portraits, but Matt, Chris and Craig really killed it tonight. Craig decided to do a black and grey portrait, even though he didn’t have to, in order show the judges that he’s not afraid to do these tattoos. The tattoo of the day went to Chris, which was well deserved, but at the same time we were really surprised that the judges weren’t even considering Craig’s portrait for tattoo of the day. Kruseman, and Duffy were brought into elimination with the human canvas jury picking Duffy. So who went home? It was a tie and was up to Oliver Peck and he chose to send home Duffy.
This was a tough episode since Duffy and Kruseman were our last master and apprentice team left and we really wanted to see a pair in the finale, but we have our final four and only one episode until the big finale in two weeks. Episode grade: A-
Who do you think is going to the finale and who do you want to see win this season of “Ink Master”? Leave us a comment below with your thoughts. If you want more news on “Ink Master” season 6 then head on over to the link here where you can get more reviews, previews, podcasts and interviews with the artists. Also, if you want more great TV news sent your way then make sure you sign up for our weekly CarterMatt newsletter. (Photo: Spike TV)