As I mentioned in this week’s New and Noteworthy we’re looking at a new season of Ink Master! I also mentioned that I had a moratorium on adding new reality shows (only so much time to watch tv even for the procrastinator) but you know how it is you’re home sick or you’re at the gym and they only show Bravo or you’re sitting around waiting for someone to deliver an update to some work that was due ‘end of day’ and it’s like 11pm… and you run into a marathon of something somewhat mindless. Well after a couple of episodes of this I was hooked.
So you have your standard reality fare, people who are talented in their own right (or in their own minds) and are brought together to see who is the best. There are some choice interpersonal dramas but that’s not the focus. There’s a challenge round, sometimes a tattoo and sometimes something skill related (think graffiti or car detailing or body painting), and winning gives you the power to assign the human canvases (peeps who get tattooed). And then final elimination round, typically a four hour tattoo.
Each week the focus is something different and the collection of these skills is what sucked me in. Some people are always clearly better than others but as each week looks at a different focus area, lines, precision, proportion, contrast, dimension, and the challenges show the incredible skill that these artists have to have and surprisingly the challenge that having all the breadth of all these skills is. Each person has their own style but to really be the master you have to be able to do it all. Technical skills vs artistry, black and white vs color, realism, portraits, new school, Asian, portraits, Celtic, bio-mechanical, tribal… the list goes on and in a timed format with a real live person.
Oh and about those human canvases, volunteering to get a tattoo on a competition show is just ridiculous but they seem in no shortage of volunteers. In almost all of the challenges there is a balance between giving the client what they want within the given challenge and creating something that showcases your skills. In all but a few challenges the client gets to say what they want and where, within the designated criteria. Newbies wanting rib tattoos to be avoided. Some compromise well and others not so much making the winning of a challenge an advantage as well as an opportunity for interpersonal drama.
While there are a lot of other tattoo shows on air the competition format seems to be the only one where you really get a sense of the skills. I should note that there is another very similar format show Best Ink which is also worth checking out. It has some things I quite like about it but think Ink Master maintains a better format for truly testing and showing the breadth of skills. Check it out and let me know what you think.
Details: Ink Master, Spike, Season 5 Episode 1 Tuesday at 10pm, seasons 1 & 2 currently available on Netflix Streaming.
