‘Ink Master’ season 4, episode 9 review: Is Scott Marshall tracing his tattoos?

Are you ready for more drama this week on “Ink Master”? There’s probably not going to be anything as intense as what we saw last week between Kyle Dunbar and Chris Nunez, but there are still a few artists looking to put the smack down on the competition. Specifically we are talking about Matti, Scott and Halo who seem to be in an alliance with a final three deal and the one person that is standing in their way from making that happen is Sausage.

Flash challenge: When the artists are all brought to a boxing ring, we briefly wondered if Kyle Dunbar was going to come out and whoop Chris Nunez again, but instead it was where the artists were going to show off their skills in “detail” (fine lines, smooth shading etc.). They have to create a custom grill for Brandon Rios, and immediately Melissa is worried because she doesn’t know what a grill is. As worried as she was, she turns in a grill with quite a bit of detail and gorgeous lettering, but as soon as we see that her piece is up against Scott we know he’s going to win since he’s the judge’s favorite.

Elimination tattoo: The artists are still focusing on detail for this challenge and they are all tattooing warriors. Scott’s flash challenge win puts him in a great spot since he’s one of the few artists that use their win advantages and he once again saddles Sausage with a tough tattoo – a ribcage piece. Can Sausage once again use his charm to talk his canvas into better placement? You better believe he did and talked her into moving it to her arm.

Gentle Jay ends up getting a really tough canvas who wants a lot of specific things, and it was interesting to see how he handled the situation as opposed to someone like Sausage. Gentle Jay became increasingly frustrated with his canvas and basically told him that he was going to tattoo what he wanted to win the competition or he was just going to tattoo himself. The canvas allowed Gentle Jay to tattoo him, but in the end the canvas was really unhappy with what he got.

When Scott paraded his finished warrior tattoo around, Gentle Jay recognized the artwork as something other then Scott’s original work, so he printed it off and showed some of the other artists. After some consulting, Gentle Jay decided he was going to present the situation to the judges.

Judging: It was clear to see from these warrior tattoos that this is a really tight race to the finish, but it was Matti (who was the only one to do a full color tattoo this week) that came out on top. Before judging was over, Gentle Jay presented his evidence to the judges that Scott was allegedly tracing and that his artwork was not original, but after viewing the pieces the judges concluded that Scott was just using reference material and that it was not similar enough to be considered tracing.

Matti and the human canvas jury both called out Gentle Jay as the bottom and the judges decided to bring down Melissa on a tattoo that was crazy detailed and so good (clearly we didn’t agree on that one). So who went home this week? No one! Kyle unexpectedly left the competition last week and the show is down an episode because of it, so it’s a non-elimination round, which is pretty lucky for Gentle Jay, because his piece would’ve sent him home for sure. Episode grade: B

Do you think that Scott is tracing or do you feel that it’s just use of references? Leave us a comment and tell us what you think. Want more “Ink Master” season 4 news, including exit interviews with the eliminated contestants? Then head over to the link here and enjoy. We podcast about the show each week so if you missed some of the episodes and want to catch up then you can listen to them at CarterMatt at the link here or download the podcasts over at iTunes.

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Photo: Spike TV