‘Ink Master’ season 6, episode 15 review: Matt O’Baugh goes after Chris Blinston, who are the top 3?

We are down to the final 4 artists on “Ink Master” season 6 and it’s an exciting race to see who is going to the finale next week. Tonight is the artists last chance to prove that they deserve one of the three spots in the finale, and while we’ve been saying for weeks now that Chris Blinston is a lock to be in the finale (and in our humble opinion will win the show), any of the other three artists left (Matt, Craig and Kruseman) deserve to be in the finale as well. We couldn’t be happier about the final four artists and would be ecstatic if any of them won – the talent level this season has been outstanding.

Flash challenge: Ready for a tattoo marathon? Tonight, Kruseman, Matt, Craig and Chris had to tattoo 4 different designs in 4 different styles to show the judges who really is the most versatile artist. Each artist will create a design and then pick the style by random skull pick – the catch is that all four artists will not only tattoo the design they created, but they will also tattoo the other three artists designs. They will all have 90 minutes to tattoo each design, one after another on the same canvas.

Matt picked the “artist choice” skull and then chose to do a geometric design in black and grey. This was a perfect strategic move on his part to hit at Chris, because Chris has said that he’s never done a design like this in his tattooing career. Matt is an evil genius! Craig got the perfect skull for him in new school/color, Chris got fine line black and grey, while Kruseman was left with Japanese.

Chris is taking Matt’s attack on him really personally instead of looking at this as a competition, and we were a little surprised by Chris’ reaction, since he’s been playing to win all season. This was a great way for Matt to bring Chris down and give everyone else a chance – it was a game move we really respected.

Craig, Chris and Kruseman had a bit of a rough go with a few of their tattoos, but Matt was the clear winner of the day hitting every tattoo spot on. The judges decided that Matt won the day with two of his tattoos and he won a spot in the live finale with this leaving Chris, Craig and Kruseman to fight for the last two spots. We have to say that we didn’t agree with the judges assessment of Craig’s Popsicle tattoo – we thought it was colorful, adorably cute and we would totally wear that tattoo like a boss.

Elimination tattoos: The final tattoo the artists will be facing is a tattoo they’ve already done. The judges are giving each artist a chance to redo a tattoo they botched earlier in the competition. Chris is redoing his Pheonix tattoo, Kruseman is redoing the stain glassed horse and Craig is redoing his Neptune tattoo. We have no idea why Kruseman isn’t having to do another portrait after what we saw last week, but it’s probably hard to find a canvas that wants some strangers dad tattooed on them. This is seriously one of the greatest challenges we’ve seen on the show and makes complete sense to help choose who goes into the finale.

Judging: Chris’s Phoenix is bright and colorful, but there are some complications in it that the judges hit him with. Kruseman absolutely gave us a stained glass horse tattoo and with this tattoo he definitely would’ve given St. Marq a run for his money if he did this in the first place. Craig had a rough critique and we immediately became worried for him.

Kruseman won best tattoo of the day and it also earned him a spot in the live finale! So who is going with him to the finale and who is going home? Chris started to question the critiques, and Dave called him out on doing that with Oliver giving his reasons behind his comments on his tattoo as well as a suggestion on what he would’ve done differently. Going up against the judges wasn’t a great idea, but it wasn’t enough to knock him out and Craig was sent home.

Watching Craig go up against Chris had us sweating. We have never made it any secret that we love Craig here at CarterMatt, so our heart wants to see him in the finale and making his mom proud, but Chris was such a heavy competitor this season it made it hard to watch either one of these artists go home. Episode grade: A-

What do you think of the final 3 going into the “Ink Master” finale next week? Leave us a comment below and tell us who you think is going to win the title. If you want more news on the show then head on over to the link here where you can get more reviews, previews, podcasts and interviews with the eliminated artists. Also, if you want more great TV news sent your way then be sure to sign up for our weekly CarterMatt newsletter. (Photo: Spike TV)