‘Ink Master’ season 8, episode 7 review: Did Tuff Tito, Nikki suffer during new-school challenge?

On the last episode of “Ink Master” season 8 we saw Gian go after the ladies (and Mike because he’s working with them), but after taking his shot he missed and instead we lost Matt. With everyone back in the game tonight are we going to see the women go after Gian and even if they do will he be able to tattoo his way out of whatever they throw at him?

Flash challenge: Last week team Peck competed so team Nunez is up for elimination and it’s their last chance to make it into Chris’ top five. This week they are testing artistry and to show off their skills they will be tattooing canvases that have quit smoking, but have permanent scars from it. Normally these types of sensitive challenges are left for the top 6 or 7 artists, but they are giving it to Nunez’s group this season early on. Team Peck gets to hand out the skulls as a group, but because of the sensitive nature of this challenge, we expect that they will not try to screw anyone over – and that’s exactly what they did. They matched up the best artists with the canvases they think they could do the best job with.

Nikki is really upset with the tattoo she was given, and Ryan and Gia don’t understand why, because they think she’s really great at the dark, Gothic tattoos and this guy wants just that. After seeing Nikki’s tattoo we don’t know why she was complaining because she did a really great job and even incorporated the dragon the guy already had.  There was a lot of solid tattoos, but the wolf Kevin did was our hands down favorite.

In the end, though, it was Nikki who scored the victory with the judge, and she has the all-important power moving forward.

Elimination tattoo: The idea here is totally cool in that the artists have to recreate famous landmarks as new-school tattoos. Right out the debate, there was some suspicion amongst the women. After all, why would Nikki give Kelly such a difficult tattoo? She may be a new-school expert, but at the same exact time this was a challenge. She was also Sketchy, someone who hadn’t been in a whole lot of danger before.

Luckily for Kelly, she really rose to the occasion here in delivering a pretty great tattoo. Going into the critique, it certainly looked like she was going to be in good shape.

Judging: Almost right away, we saw Chris Nunez rip Kevin a new one for abandoning the majority of the advice he gave him, and creating some water that he really did not like. As for Sketchy, he for the most part succeeded other than some “ghostly” eyes that were in the only black-and-gray new-school tattoo presented. Kelly eventually was the winner, and it was very much deserved.

We do have to be honest here, though: It felt like a sure thing that Tuff Tito was going home after seeing all of the tattoos of this group. There were a number of errors, whether it be the look of the Statue of Liberty’s face to missing a spike to having one in the wrong place. Tito was put into the bottom by the Jury of Peers, while Kevin and Nikki went along with him. The only thing that started to make us wonder if someone else could go home is Nikki continuing to remind us that she is relatively new to tattooing and doesn’t know the style that well. Episode grade: B- (no real drama in the elimination).

What did you think of tonight’s “Ink Master” elimination and did the right person go home? Leave us your thoughts in the comment box below.