‘Ink Master’ season 8, episode 8 review: Did Ryan Ashley, Gia Rose take out BoneFace?

Last time on “Ink Master” season 8 we narrowed down the artists to the top ten. Now that we are at this point, we really want to see the team twist go away and have every artist for themselves. We also want to see no more of entire teams sitting out a week and missing out on challenges that show off their skills. It’s been a bit odd having that happen this season and it’s time to have everyone all in every week.

Flash challenge: Team Nunez has found their final five artists, and now it’s time for team Peck to eliminated one more of their artists to bring them to their top five, so they are up for elimination tonight. This week they are testing ingenuity by making the artists sculpt a piece out of just metal rods and welding and they will be working in pairs (assigned by team Nunez). The team couldn’t decide together so Sketchy Lawyer went rogue and started pairing up people he thought would work badly together. Nikki and Kelly got Sketchy Laywer back on track after he tried to pair Gia and BoneFace – so the teams are: Ryan and Gia, BoneFace and Gian, and Nate and Mike. Chris thinks that his team is playing it way too nice and that they should’ve gone with Sketchy Lawyer’s plan to make them uncomfortable since these are people they have to beat.

With Nikki pushing hard to make sure that Ryan and Gia got partnered together so the women’s alliance stays strong, Sketchy Lawyer decides to start rallying the men together and helps them out with ideas for their sculptures to take the women down.

There were some really cool sculptures created, but Nate and Mike are the only ones that made one that moves (a robot). BoneFace and Gian used their work bench and created a full sitting bench, while Gia and Ryan moved away from the straight lines of the metal rods and curved them into a very cool deer skull. This is going to be a tough one to call as for us they were all winners when it came to showing ingenuity. Very fun challenge! Ryan and Gia won and they are in charge of the skull picks.

Elimination tattoo: With Ryan and Gia in charge, they decide to give BoneFace the worst canvas since he and Nikki have beef and Nikki hooked them up in the flash challenge. Tonight is pinup night and in the past this has always been a rough one for the artists. They have to sketch the canvases partners, make them a pin up and tattoo them…. and we have a few male pinups for the first time!!! Ryan and Gia gave BoneFace one of the male pinups and we have seen him do male faces in the past so was this a mistake?

Judging: There were a few rough outings, but one thing that stood out from this is that Ryan Ashley is definitely going to be in the top 3 if not the winner this season. We would be picking Ryan to win tonight’s challenge, but they really loved what Gian did with his male pin up and he won tattoo of the day. The jury of peers chose Mike and the judges asked for Nate, BoneFace and Gia… so basically everyone’s in trouble besides Ryan and Gian. While the judges feel that they all dropped the ball, we ended up saying goodbye to Gia and the female alliance has been broken.

Pinup day is always one of our favorite days because it’s the most challenging and really shows us who has some serious tattooing chops. We absolutely loved seeing male pinups this time around since we have never seen that on this show (or in real life for that matter). What we love about “Ink Master” is that they continually reinvent themselves and bring in things we’ve never seen before. Episode grade: A-

What did you think of tonight’s “Ink Master” elimination and do you think the right artist went home? Leave us a comment in the box below and tell us if the right artist went home.