‘Ink Master’ season 7, episode 8 preview: James Vaughn arrives as the final returning artist

Next week on “Ink Master,” we could start to really see the competition accelerate in some news ways. For the last time, we’re going to have a chance to see a veteran artist enter the competition, and this one is particularly fierce: James Vaughn. He’s a beast from all the way at the beginning of the competition, and he will make things rather difficult on the remainder of the contestants.

At least this time around, though, we’re going to be seeing someone enter without the threat of knowing someone else is on the other side. This may lead to some shifting alliances, and a different style of playing the game for some, as hinted in a preview for next week’s episode.

Take, for example, Cleen Rock One and Christian Buckingham. Could they actually decide that they should team up as a clash of the titans? There’s some logic in some ways behind the perceived “best artists” working to ensure they make it as far as possible, but the problem this season is determining just who those people are. If we had to say based on overall performance so far, the four strongest are probably Christian, Anthony Michaels, Matti Hixson, and Sausage … and Cleen isn’t even in this group. Also, good luck getting Matti and Sausage to work together. Not gonna happen.

This preview also hinted at a particularly exhausting Flash Challenge that could take a lot out of the artists. Remember here that while you see these people draw and work once a week, they’re actually going almost around the clock filming this. Their schedule is extremely tight to turn around production in a short period of time; days off are few and far between.

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