Ink Master season 11 episode 4 review: Another strong artist leaves

Ink Master - Team Cleen

Ink Master season 11 episode 4 proved yet another important lesson when it comes to the show: Skull-picks matter. Tonight, Christian Buckingham and his team’s strategy played to that yet again putting a hurting on Cleen’s team.

Before getting into the competition portion of tonight’s episode, Oba Jackson departed tonight in what was basically a decision by show doctors. You can read more about that over at the link here.

Now, let’s move on to discuss what happened with tonight’s elimination. The elimination of Jamie Lee Parker is, at least from our vantage point, the third straight week in which a pretty solid artist went home. We don’t think that the weakest artist has gone home once since the teams were finalized.

Related – Check out our exclusive interviews with Christian Buckingham and Cleen Rock One!

So what was his undoing? It had a lot to him having a difficult design to do (a Japanese dragon) on a very difficult part of the body in the wrist. It wasn’t a style that he was as familiar with and because of that, he really stumbled with the anatomy and making it consistent. The judges didn’t seem to have too much debate as to whether or not to send him home; it just stinks for Cleen Rock One and his team because with another design, he could’ve easily stuck around. Plus, Jamie was an interesting guy on this season given that he was a little bit quieter and more introspective than the average Ink Master contestant — in that sense, he was an underdog.

The other artist in real danger of going home was Stacy Smith, who seemed to struggle with a design that was reasonably similar to the style she often works with. We’ve seen her and JP over on Team Christian have some bumps in the road this season, but they’ve both done enough to stick around. We do understand why Stacy was in the bottom, but also why Jamie went home over her — while her color-saturation may not have been perfect, it was readable from a good distance and the anatomy of her seahorse made sense.

CarterMatt Verdict

Ink Master season 11 episode 4 was a very good episode for drama, a sad one for Oba, and another reminder that sometimes, factors outside your control can hurt you. We are starting to get a sense as to who the real contenders are, with Tiffer Wright, Tony Medellin, and Angel Rose all impressing on a regular basis throughout the first three episodes.

The one critique we can offer is with the Grudge Match showdown part of the episode — while it’s great to see Christian and Cleen battle, isn’t there something better that you can be having the other contestants doing? There’s just a lot of standing around at that point.

Related Be sure to check out some other news, including a preview for what is coming up next

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