‘Ink Master’ season 8, episode 3 review: Dave Robinowitz takes a shot at Ryan Ashley, Gia Rose

Last time on “Ink Master” season 8 we saw Carolyn go home as the first artist to hit the bricks after the bloodletting in the first episode. We also saw that judging for Chris Nunez and Oliver Peck might not be as impartial as we were hoping since they both picked their own teams to win. Is this going to be a Dave Navarro chooses the winner ever week season? If so we have no problem with that since he has always been a very impartial judge that bases his decisions purely on what’s the task and did the artist complete what was asked of them.

Flash tattoo: Even though Team Peck won last week, they don’t escape elimination, so with that their team is facing an elimination challenge right off the bat. They will be tested on precision and with the help of a Corona beer product placement (with their slogan being “find your beach”), each artist will get a pile of sand and be paired up with artists on Team Nunez to help them “find their beach”. Because Kelly won tattoo of the day, two artists from team Peck will sculpt her “beach”.

Dave may have broken his shovel early on, but he has a bachelor’s degree in sculpture and he’s from Florida so he feels at home working with sand. After seeing his Texas themed sand sculpture with a very cool snake wrapping around the whole piece we have to say that Dave’s sculpting confidence is well earned. Ryan is working on Kelly’s “beach” and it’s clear that Kelly is throwing her an easy idea, which gives Ryan the motivation to move forward in a female alliance.

While there are a few rough sculptures and a few collapses, there were some really solid pieces. Dave came out on top as the winner, which was no surprise since his sculpting skills are on point. The way he had his snake wrap around the whole Texas themed sand sculpture was fantastic and impressed everyone, especially with a difficult medium to work with. Dave will get to pick the skulls for the elimination tattoo for his own team.

Elimination tattoo: Dave had an interesting strategy in handing out the skulls as he talked to the other team about who he is thinking of putting up. This season is set up as teams, but at the same time they are pitting their own team members against each other by having someone on the same team hand out the skulls. This structure doesn’t really make a lot of sense when it comes to keeping the team comrade going, so seeing Dave talk to the opposite team wasn’t that strange.

Team Peck is faced with tattooing a peacock to show precision as there are many colors and textures in this animal. These canvases are all really difficult, wanting huge tattoos, not willing to move them from difficult places and wanting really bizarre interpretations of a peacock. Dave takes a shot at Ryan and Gia with the hardest tattoos, and they were upset about it. In the end, someone was going to have those two difficult tattoos and Ryan and Gia are very strong artists.

Judging: There were some interesting tattoos and it was cool to see so many different interpretations of a peacock. One of our favorites was Boneface as he was the only artist to do a zoomed in look at the peacock’s face and it was on point. The best tattoo of the day went to Gian and it was well deserved. The peer jury picked Geary and Ryan and Gia were picked by the judges. After a rough critique we saw Geary go home.

We like the Peck vs Nunez set up but the structure of it is a little weird for us. Team Nunez didn’t compete at all this week and we had Dave handing out skulls with a chance to screw over members of his own team, which doesn’t really make a lot of sense with the twist still in play. We also saw the formation of the women’s alliance and it was pretty obvious in the peers jury where Nikki and Kelly pushed for Ryan and Gia not to be in the bottom even though they had a rough go this week. Episode grade: B-

What did you think of the elimination on tonight’s episode of “Ink Master” and do you think the right person went home? Leave a comment in the box below.