- In the sense of a coverup, you nail it. You hit technical
application here really well. You apply the ink to the skin in a way that gets rid
of the underlying tattoo. That real deep, rich black
that you get down there puts so much depth into the tattoo. And when you have those leaves you can balance the black everywhere then it always camouflages nicely and somebody can't go,
"Oh, there's the coverup." - It's very beautiful, and
technically it is pretty perfect. Morning, everybody. You have six hours to
complete your tattoo. The judges will be looking
for highly imaginative art that turns bad work into something your canvases can be proud of. - This is gonna be awesome man, we're gonna do something
really beautiful for you. The rules of thumb when
approaching a coverup are, you're not covering a tattoo. What you're doing is you're
actually camouflaging it. The darks are always gonna be there, the black's certainly
always gonna be there. So, what you're trying to
do is work with what's there and make something brand
new for the person. - It's a good choice for a
cover because it's lighter, there's no bold dark outlines on it. - Alrighty.
- Are you happy with it? - Yeah, it looks awesome. - Awesome. (upbeat music) - What made you go with a koi fish? - I've always wanted one
and it just never happened. - You know, I do realistic type stuff. The koi fish itself,
I'm confident with it. I traced the coverup, the bulk of the body falls
right over top of it. The only challenge for me right now is to get it done in six hours, you know. (upbeat music) - I lay down 90% of my clients
just to make them comfortable and feel at ease throughout
the whole entire tattoo. And that helps so much. - Tommy, come on up front. - [Oliver] It was definitely
tricky and even in the parts where the former tattoo
might show a little bit, you put wispy lines to
help make it look like there's stuff going on there. - Shane. (tense music) You got to cover up a pretty
faded tattoo to begin with. - [Shane] Yeah, it wasn't too bad. - [Oliver] The tattoo is
clean, precise, smooth. - The tattoo is solid, the coverup works, but the actual artwork didn't line up. The head is much bigger than the tail. The tail's not big enough
to propel the head. You didn't hit the Mark (upbeat music) - Tommy and Shane, why do you think you
two are standing here? - Hopefully commend us a little bit for putting out a good effort. I would hope to think that
not getting eliminated yet. (tense music) - Good news is you guys
are in the top two. And Tommy, the judges feel
that you did the best work. - Thank you. - [Oliver] He really worked a
design to fit right over top. - Nice job. - Thank you, Chris. - So, today's elimination tattoo. We're testing your ingenuity
by tattooing a coverup. You have six hours and
your time starts now. (upbeat music) - You ready for this? - Definitely. - Ingenuity is very necessary
to be able to do a coverup. There's a lot of different elements, understanding the
positioning of the tattoo and being able to disperse
light and dark evenly. So, it's not so obvious
where the cover up is. - I'll show you what I got. My canvas wants a Celtic cross with a dragon wrapped around it. And I took those key elements
and kind of combined them into something that would
be a little bit better. This is gonna start off black and gray, but as it fades to that peace right here, it's gonna go into all those reds and everything and look epic. - That's amazing. - The judges want you to
think outside of the box and come up with a creative
way to get rid of a tattoo. Not only did I do that but I have also created a better design than what the guy originally wanted. I have to win this one, I have to. - This week you were
asked to tattoo a coverup. We're testing your ingenuity. Sarah. (tense music) This guy didn't necessarily
have a specific design in mind. - He really liked my paintings. So, that was the first
thing I kind of focused on. - [Chris] Her face is so realistic, and the detail in the
eye leads me to believe that you could have
detailed those fingers out. - Clint. How do you feel about this? - It's a horse with wings and it was dumb, so I gave him something badass. - You really stepped up to
the plate at this challenge and went (beep) hard. You totally blew our mind and
made an idea 10 times better. - Jesse, you're up. (tense music) Were you happy to get this canvas? - I was happy the fact that
he was open to whatever. - [Oliver] It was a big mess of a coverup, I think you did a pretty
good job masking that. - I'm not typically a new-school guy but I like what you've done. Are you gonna do anything else this ride? - Definitely. - The person who's gonna cash the check is the person that can do
anything that walks into the shop. You're going to have to show other stuff. - The judges have decided that
the best tattoo of the day (upbeat music) goes to Jesse. - Undeniably, you did the smoothest, cleanest, biggest,
baddest tattoo of the day. And you deserve the victory. - Thank you - Today, you must cover
up a prison tattoo, proving your flexibility. You have six hours to tattoo
and your time begins now. - Let's get it on.
- Let's do it, man. - Tatu Baby is doing a nice tattoo, other than the fact that the finger is not attached to the
hand and it has arthritis. - She spent a whole season hearing that the fingers are one of
the most important things, don't (beep) them up,
she should know better. - This week, we tested your flexibility by asking you to cover prison tattoos. Greg. - My client wanted a badass eagle-man. - What happens in this tattoo
for me is that it's flat. These colors aren't popping
as hard as they could because there's no black. Had you have put black, would
look that much more dynamic. You have the ability to do a
really tough looking tattoo and you obviously can draw. You have a winning combination, you've got to put it to practice. - Jimmy. (tense music) Were you happy with your coverup? - Part of the challenge is being flexible. For what I had to do, I think I did good. - You did achieve the coverup. The white, that was the thing
that threw me for a loop. Gonna pump this much white in there, most of the time this will turn into almost a keloid looking result. - I tried to get rid of
all that heavy black area 'cause I didn't want it to
look like a giant eight ball. - [Oliver] A year down
the road, it will not have the same brilliance it has today. People need to understand that that's not what they're gonna have for the rest of their life. - Tatu Baby. - You got a lot to live
up to in this competition but you're gonna give a
lot of people a hard time. So, let the battle begin. - The judges have decided that
the best tattoo of the day (upbeat music) goes to Tatu Baby. - [Oliver] Even with the
miss-anatomy of the hand, you did a very beautiful tattoo. Smooth shading, nice
color, really good job. - Thank you. - You have six hours to show
adaptability with a coverup. Your time begins now. - Let's do this. - All right. - There you go. - You know, when I saw
that sketch I was like, "Oh my God, this is gonna be awesome." - Oh yeah?
- Yeah. - It's the type of effect I want to make. My goal today is definitely to outperform Scott and Maddie. - Yeah boy. - Now when the
competition's getting tough, that's when I plan on shining. I'm gonna stomp this tattoo. - [Maddie] Awesome, dude. - Thanks, man. (upbeat music) - You okay? - All good. A $100,000 tattoo right here. - Hell yeah. That's it. - Wow. That's badass dude. - Oh my God. - [Halo] Badass or what? - That is awesome. - Today, you had to show adaptability by transforming tattoos
that your canvases regret into tattoos they can wear proudly. Based on your work, two
artists will be closing shop. Halo. (upbeat music) - [Oliver] As far as the
coverup goes, you had it easy, but this tattoo has such solid saturation over a big area of skin, and whether it's a coverup or
not, this is a great tattoo. - You did a great job applying this. This is soft tissue that
can get over-worked. It can look beat up, yours looks healed. (upbeat music) - Scott. (tense music) - It was one of the bigger
tattoos to cover up. I think you approached it the right way with the hot tones away
from where the coverup is. If I looked at this tattoo, I wouldn't even think it was a coverup. - People can shake their heads or do whatever they want behind you, but the tattoo's damn
good and a lot of people that are shaking their heads aren't. - Before we send you back to the loft, the judges have determined a winner, Scott and Halo, you have the top two tattoos of the day. The judges have decided
the best tattoo of the day goes to Halo. (everyone applauding) - Halo, the saturation
you used in this tattoo, the way you pulled off the
solid fields of blue, very nice. You did a great job. - Congratulations, Halo. All right artists, you have six hours to do your tattoos. This is your last chance to prove that you deserve a spot
in the live finale. Your time begins now. - Let's do it, man. - The biggest thing is gonna be working with the existing piece that you have, trying to turn that
circle into a real circle. I'm gonna re-touch this tattoo
instead of covering it up and then tattoo landmarks
from around the world as a collage around his arm. Time permitting, if Berlin works, then we'll do Central America. Is that all right with you? - Sounds great, yeah.
- Awesome. I can nail every single
skill in this one piece. All right buddy, you ready? I'm here to win and somebody
else is gonna go home because that spot in the finale is mine. - I can already see it now, millions of people
holding signs that says, "We was Sausage!" - That would be pretty sweet. - Sausage's artwork looks
generic and very clip art and cut and pasted to me. There is no way that Sausage's tattoo is gonna beat my tattoo today. Wouldn't be a tattoo if
it didn't hurt like (beep) - I know right. - I've been kicking (beep)
ass this whole time. I got to just keep doing what I'm doing. - No pain no gain. - When I'm done with this tattoo, you're not gonna tell it's a coverup and it's gonna be screaming
Scott Marshall all over it. (upbeat music) I'm doing something bold by putting a lot of bright
Canary yellow into this piece to really just push it over the top. - Sausy. - Have you seen Scott's and Maddie's? - Scott's you can still see
the coverup right through it. - Oh no. Using yellow as a coverup is a huge no-no because you can still see
the old piece underneath it. This might be enough to send his ass home. - (beep) Yeah. - [Sausage] Take a look. - Wow. - Oh, it is amazing. - Holy (beep). That's (beep) dynamic. - Artists, this was your last chance to prove that you deserve to
compete in the live finale for a $100,000, a
feature in Inked Magazine and the title of Ink Master. Sausage. You reworked Melissa's tattoo. - To try to do a coverup
and belt in a ton of black didn't make sense. So, I decided to add something
that's a lot more bold and stylish to the airplane itself and then build a sleeve that
he can add onto at any time. - This is actually gonna be
very hard for people to work off because the quality is really high. This is showing versatility to come out here and show, "I just did these big, bright flowers, now I'm gonna do this
really fine line detail and really show some nice soft
black and gray" is top-notch. - Scott. - [Chris] Overall, the
color palette is strong. Really solid clean application. It has your signature all over it. - [Oliver] Up close,
you can definitely see the nautical star ghost
outline through there. If this could have been
moved over just a little bit to keep that out of that yellow lit, that would have been better. - No matter where I moved it, it was poking out here
and poking out there, so. - [Oliver] But you know
yellow is not covering (beep). - The judges have decided that
the best tattoo of the day (tense music) goes to Sausage. - Wow. - [Halo] Nice dude. - [Oliver] It showed a lot of ingenuity in putting this design together and really thinking outside the box instead of just doing a big coverup. - You've earned your
spot in the live finale. - Wow, thank you. - Congratulations man, you deserve it. - All right guys, you have six hours to help your canvases make a fresh start by covering up a hate tattoo. And your time starts now. - Let's go. - Today these artists are gonna
be covering up hate tattoos. They really have to put everything aside and do the best up they possibly can. - What's going on, what's
the story behind that? - I was just brainwashed
when I was younger and when I got older and had kids, I realized man, what the hell? I'm trying to do a 360. - Well, I'd love to help man, that's what I'm here for
- I appreciate that. - Ingenuity is always gonna
play into the coverup. You should never be able
to pick out a section where you know the coverup is, that's the biggest fail. - When I saw it from across the room, I was like, "I see a flower right there." The canvas I gave myself was probably one of the
hardest coverups in there because it's so big. But I know that I can cover
anything with a flower. I do flowers all the time, so it wasn't really a far stretch. I've designed all the pedals to curl in right around that circular shape that's part of the anarchy symbol. I can just kind of keep
all my darks on the tips. I can use the shadows
that are already there. Everybody knows this gonna be
a (beep) really nice tattoo. - Let's get this over with and let me get to the damn finale. (tense music) I've been trying to get rid
of it about 20 years, man. When I first got the tattoo,
I was like 13, 14 years old, and like an idiot joined
and Aryan brotherhood. That (beep) ain't cool,
that's not where I want to be. I mean, it doesn't matter
if you're red, black, brown, yellow, green, whatever. - Unfortunately, I've
been a victim of hate. When I was wanting to
get an apprenticeship to learn how to tattoo. I was told that the color of my skin was gonna hinder my chances. To be a minority, it's
actually driving me even more to do a killer job. - So, how'd you get rid of the Swastika? - I put a little chain in the gravestone for burying the past so it's perfect. - Can't wait for all the stress that's gonna be off my shoulders. - To be able to help
this guy change his life is a complete honor. - Ain't nobody gonna beat this one. - Let them know how it's done. - Today, you had to show ingenuity by covering a hate tattoo. - James, you're up first. (tense music) You chose a pretty large
cover up for yourself. - [James] First thing I
saw was a floral pattern that would fit her and just
get rid of that huge tattoo without being really dark. - You've given this woman
something very feminine, something very beautiful. Of the day this woman's
life has been transformed more dramatically than anybody else and she has you to thank for it. - [Oliver] There are some lines that are less than perfect in here, especially in these top
flowers in the outside. There's some areas where you have just hacked white all
the way up to those lines and the lines that are crooked
and the lines that are shaky, it makes them really standout. But something like this
with this much detail, close inspection you're gonna
find a lot of discrepancies. - Feeling confident about
putting this many lines into this type of skin in this area knowing that you're up against
six hours was a ballsy move. This panned out for you in that sense. You definitely achieved the coverup. The shading that you have
going from dark to light, you disperse it throughout and that way it's not an obvious coverup. It's a strong tattoo and
it's a lot of tattooing in a short amount of time. - Anthony. (tense music) - You have so many nice
details in the hair. You have really fine, fine lines. You create this kind of ratted feeling but it's still shows
perfect line work in there. This thing really, really
shows strong today. You did a great job. - Judges have decided that
the best tattoo of the day goes to Anthony. Today, you must cover a tattoo in a spot that is often a
source of embarrassment, a tramp stamp. (tense music) - I knew that damn tramp stamp fad would come back to bite me in the ass. Tramp stamps became a
fad because their designs were typically small and their
placement was easy to hide. However, the placement of the tramp stamp on the extreme lower back makes it a serious challenge
to cover tastefully. - Tattooing over already tattooed skin just makes the tattoo process
that much more difficult. If an artist doesn't have
good technical application, there's no point in tattooing because you're just gonna put them through unnecessary amounts of pain and see the tattoo underneath anyways. Oh, your skin takes ink like butter. - Oh good. - I came into this competition needing to prove exactly who I am, and with every single day that I'm here I get more and more
comfortable in my own skin. (upbeat music) - Are you becoming a
(beep) Fort Lauderdale handcrafter or what? - I hope so. (beep) Dude. - Now's my time to shine and prove that I can win time and time again. (tense music) - Done with these flowers,
going for the other side now. - What color are you doing them? - I'm going for red 'cause that way I can do the butterfly blue and that blue little one that you got here to match with the other one. And then you got like hot and cold. This canvas is awesome. She's letting me do my thing and just reworking this
tattoo and adding to it. It looks beautiful, I got to say. Nikki's thinking that
I'm gonna drop the ball with this tattoo. Her strategy is definitely
not gonna work today. - This is lovely. - Gian's not even really doing a coverup, he's just reworking
what was already there. It definitely doesn't meet the
the challenge of a coverup. - Today you had to show
Bulletproof technical application by covering a tramp stamp. Nikki, let's start with you. (tense music) - In the sense of a coverup, you nail it. You hit technical
application here really well. You apply the ink to the skin in a way that gets rid
of the underlying tattoo. That real deep, rich black
that you get down there, it puts so much depth into the tattoo. And when you have those leaves you can balance the black everywhere then it always camouflages nicely and somebody can't go,
"Oh, there's the coverup." - It's very beautiful and
technically it is pretty perfect. - There's no trace of the existing tattoo and that was a massive
tattoo that you covered up. Great job.
- Thanks. - Kelly. (tense music) This does not look like
a coverup on any level. This is my favorite
tattoo from you so far. - [Chris] The color palette is very nice. It's laid out very well,
but where you really excel in this tattoo is your
technical application. Not very many people
can create these shadows that will pull off these tones that well. - I think it's perfect. Your technical application
is flawless in this. - Gian. (tense music) Instead of covering up,
you did a reworking. - Just tried to fix it
and make a pretty tattoo. Tried to make the best of what I had. - Is it fair that
everybody else covered up an existing tattoo and you reworked one? - I feel like this was the
most responsible choice to make and would have been a really,
really hard one to cover. - [Oliver] This is 100% the
right move to give this canvas the best tattoo. He covered up every bad design and line of this tattoo with a new beautiful line and design of a tattoo and the quality and the
technical application of which he applied this
whole tattoo is amazing. - All right judges time to determine who had the best tattoo of the day. - [Robert] Kelly's tricks outweigh Gian's. - Let's look at Nikki's tattoo and look at what she covered 'cause that's a full-on coverup and that's a full on beautiful tattoo. - Robert, which way you leaning? - I'm leaning on Nikki. - My vote is for Kelly. I believe you hit the challenge. I believe your artistry's on point, it looks pretty technically sound to me. Chris.
- I'm with Nikki. It was a large coverup and
she laid it out perfectly and executed it like a champ. - The judges have decided
the best tattoo of the day goes to Nikki. - Sweet, thank you. - All right artists, you have six hours to tattoo a coverup and
your time starts now. - Let's do it. - Sweet. - Today we're testing detail and the way the detail works in coverups is understanding how to
actually create a coverup that doesn't look like one. I don't want to see
big black or dark spots and they don't need to do a tattoo six times bigger than the
cover up to make it disappear. - Look at those crispy lines. Those lines look good. - I hope so, there's a (beep) lot of them. The most difficult aspect of this tattoo is just getting it done in six hours because the coverup itself
will be the body of the owl and then proportionately the wings are gonna have to be this (beep) big. I'm taking a huge risk right
now and if it doesn't pay off I'm gonna be (beep). - Today you had to tattoo a cover up. Men's team, let's start with you, Jason. (tense music) - [Chris] It's a very intimidating
tattoo to try to cover up and you did a great job
really punching in the blacks. A lot of detail not only with line work, but with your directional shading. That thing was so faded
out that your light shading pretty much becomes that
same tone that's underneath so it's very easy to camouflage. - I think you gave this guy a reason to take his shirt off again. Great job.
- (beep) Yeah, thanks. - Laura. - It's a really clean
sticker tattoo from you. As far as it serving for a coverup, it definitely does its job. As impressive as the tattoo is, I've seen it a bunch of times, but soon enough you're gonna have to... - Oh, I'll give you
something else, trust me. - I'll send you a letter from the finale, it'll probably be pretty cool there. - Good job, Laura. - The judges have decided
the best tattoo of the day goes to Jason. Head back to the loft. (upbeat music)
