'Ink Master: Rivals' season 5, episode 8 review: Did Julia Carlson tattoo herself? (2024)

Ink Master, Ink Master Rivals, Ink Master season 5 reviewOctober 21, 2014

We are rounding into the halfway point of “Ink Master: Rivals” and this has easily been our favorite season of the show. There is the normal drama that happens on every reality show, but the masterminds behind this season brought us back to what we love about this series: Great tattoos, on point judging and big personalities.

Flash tattoo: Scrimshaw is the name of the game and if you don’t know what that is we’ll help: It’s carving designs into bone (in this case a very particular “private” bone from a walrus) and then adding ink to make the design come to life. There were a lot of nautical themes that came out of this challenge since scrimshaw is something that goeshand in hand with sailors, but what the judges were looking for was how well they can implement “detail” into their work. Unfortunately a few artists (like Joshua) went too big and dropped the ball and there were other artists like Angel (who haven’t always been at the top) that really came out to play today. We saw Aaron run off with the win this week and he has the skull picks.

Elimination tattoo: We have a special guest judge this week, who’s known though out the tattoo industry as one of the top dogs in bio-mechanical art:Aaron Cain. With Aaron in the house, we weren’t surprised to learn that the theme this week is bio-mechanical, and it makes sense since the artists are being tested on details. Julia admitted earlier in this competition that she’s only done one or two pieces in her career, so we are instantly worried about her.

Aaron was ruthless with handing out the skulls, wanting to knock some of the better artists down. When we saw that one of the canvases wanted their head done, we thought that Joshua was going to get that one – definitely the hardest and something that Joshua has said time and time again on this show that he doesn’t do: Heads or faces. For some reason Aaron gave Joshua a rib piece (which he promptly moved as usual) and Aaron took the head piece for himself!

Julia gets a canvas that only wants mechanical and not bio-mechanical and they just cannot meet at the half way point. While the canvas is definitely difficult, we were surprised at how Julia reacted to him. There is a way to sell a client on a design and then there’s a way to completely turn that person off of you and telling your client to go f*** yourself is the way to do that. Cleen tells Dave that he wouldn’t have bounced the client for not wanting to get the bio-mechanical tattoo, but if the challenge is bio-mech and you don’t deliver a bio-mech tattoo then you know the judges are going to come down on you for it.Now that Julia is without a canvas, she decides the best way to deal with the situation is to tattoo herself.

Judging: Although Julia hasn’t done a lot of bio-mech, it turns out that the judges like what she tattooed, however they weren’t thrilled to hear about what happened in her consultation with her canvas. Oliver tells her that not only was he disgusted with the way she treated her client, but that all of the judges had watched back the footage from her time with her canvas and say that she was in the wrong.

Cleen Rock One won best tattoo of the day and Don, Angel, Eric (voted by the human canvas jury) and, Julia are called down for elimination. Did Julia do the worst tattoo of the day? No she didn’t, but because of the way she spoke to the client she wasinthe bottom. In the end we lost our Angel and are completely bummed that we aren’t going to see him and his badass Drogo beard on the show anymore.

This is a detail challenge and not a social skills challenge, so we actually don’t agree with Julia being brought into the bottom – and if we are being completely honest here, if Julia is going to be in the bottom for telling a client to go f*** themselves, then Emily should’ve been in the bottom for trying to screw over a client with a design she knew was wrong in an effort to put one over on Angel.Episode grade: C+

11 Comments

howard weatherly
October 27, 2014 @3:14 am
Maybe it’s just me but if you guys watched the footage of Julia’s interview with her canvas, you missed the fact that he was being a d*&k! Julia was trying to reason with someone who was unreasonable. I applaud her for sticking to her guns; perhaps she could have been more tactful though.
scud32
October 23, 2014 @8:40 am
I think Julia really went overboard with her canvas. She went crazy when realizing Mark (canvas) wanted more mechanical elements than organic ones. But it did not seem to bother her in the first episode when she faced off against Caroline and produced gears that were totally metal like. So I really think she could have worked something out this time but she totally snapped.
Even Cleen tattoo seemed more mineral than organic and he still won the challenge.
A bit bummed out by the Angel’s elimination, his tattoo was definitely messy and not really easy to read but had some really nice details which was the name of the game
Jayla369
October 23, 2014 @4:57 am
It has become ridiculously obvious that the judges rank the artists right out of the gate. We have no idea whether Cleen is going to screw up a tattoo, but it wouldn’t matter at this point. It will be him, his look alike buddy and Josh in the end-no matter what. The dude with the glasses, Julia, and Emily are next up for elimination, mark my words here.
I don’t mind Nunez so much after watching the way he tried to work it out with Kyle last year in the street. At least he tried, although it was his own nastiness that started it. But Oliver….Let me tell you, if some dude that’s not my father or my husband told me to stop “f’ing shaking my head” and cut his eyes at me the way Oliver did Julia, I would be hot. It’s a reality show, not life or death, and getting bent with someone like he does only reflects his Napoleon complex…which he’s always had.
BTW, we all saw Julia’s canvas. He was a douchebag. She made up her mind to tat herself, asked him nicely about 100 times to roll out, and finally had to scream at the stalker to get him to leave. Nunex and Oliver are so full of it regarding the professionalism in their own shops-If a customer came into their shop, wanted something stupid, hated everything Chris/Oliver tried to draw, and then wouldn’t leave, they don’t know how that would go down. At any time a customer can become unmanageble and at any time a customer can get out of hand, whether in tattoo shops or ice cream parlors. Julia could have used more finesse on the guy for sure, but I think he was a toolbag.
I notice Dave is never mentioned in viewer commentary, and I think we all know he is meant to be the star power. I don’t mind that he is unassuming, but I have noticed that, this season, when they have the judges give an on the spot yeah or nay, Dave is not one to think on his own.
- Phil
  October 24, 2014 @9:00 pm
  Terrible perspective on the Julia situation. The first two para’s I agree with though. But seriously, it’s crazy how your mind must work if that’s what you take from Julia’s BS. STALKER? Get serious. Douchebag? Nope. Asked him nicely? Not once, certainly not 100. You think he was a toolbag, but honestly I’m 100% certain that you Jayla are a complete TOOL. Please re-watch it over and over again until it becomes clear to you, may help you to garner better relations going forwards.
  - howard weatherly
    October 27, 2014 @3:16 am
    Maybe you should re-watch it also?
- CC
  October 26, 2014 @5:05 pm
  I agree 100%. That canvas was a d-bag. My view on it is he was getting a tattoo for free. Anytime you are getting something for free – unless it is from a church or charity of some sort – there is always a catch. In this case, the catch is that you aren’t going to get 100% what you want as there are rules the tattoo artist has to go by for the competition. The canvas wasn’t compromising at all. His view was all or nothing, so he got nothing.
  Yes, Julia went too far in telling him to go f*** himself, but I – and anyone with a brain – can clearly see that this guy was pushing her over the edge. It’s not easy to think clearly when someone is pushing you over the edge.
  I’m so pissed at Oliver for the way he spoke to Julia. I lost a lot of the respect I had for him when he did that. Obviously, the judges knew what had happened with the canvas, so when they went back and watched all of the film of Julia and the canvas interacting, they were biased. I watched it, as did my boyfriend, my sister, and my mom. We all came to the same conclusion: Julia tried compromising with the canvas, he didn’t want to compromise and probably lied about wanting a bio-mech tattoo to get a tat for free, Julia told him to leave because he wouldn’t compromise, and – just as you said – he became a stalker and kept coming back instead of leaving like he was asked. That is what pushed Julia over the edge.
  Moral of the story here, folks: don’t go on Ink Master to get a free tattoo unless you are willing to compromise on what you get.
  On each finale, they find people who don’t care what kind of tattoo they get so that the artist can do whatever they want to showcase their ability. That’s what they should do for every episode. I am so sick and tired of watching people go home because they got a crappy human canvas.
  - scud32
    October 30, 2014 @12:27 pm
    There is a difference between not getting exactly what you want and getting something you do not want to get.
    Just think about what Julia did.
    * Mark wanted an arm tattoo.
    * Julia said she will design a piece for him without asking about anything he will be interested in regarding the biomech aspect.
    * Day 2, she presents him the design and right off the bat tells him that it is this one (which does not include any element he was requesting) and end up applying a tattoo initially designed for an arm on her leg. Sounds pretty messed up to me.
    - CC
      November 3, 2014 @9:41 am
      How in the world did you come up with, “Julia said she will design a piece for him without asking about anything he will be interested in regarding the biomech aspect”? We – the audience – never saw the full discussion, so how could you possibly know that? Besides that, she asked him what he wanted and all he wanted was a mechanical tattoo, not bio-mech. When she tried to explain to him that what he wanted was classified as “mechanical” and that she couldn’t do exactly what he wanted because it did not fit the challenge, he argued with her. Oh, and let’s not forget that she got on her computer and showed him multiple different bio-mech designs that they could interpret into his tattoo and he said no to every single one of them. He wouldn’t compromise one bit. So, yeah, she did ask him about what bio-mech aspects he wanted in his tattoo.
      Day 2… Seriously? After everything he put her through, I don’t blame her. I would’ve done the same. Mark refused to compromise, told her over and over again that all he wanted was a mechanical tattoo – in so many words – and put Julia in a lose-lose situation. If she gave him what he wanted, she’d get ripped a new one by the judges and possibly sent home for not doing the type of tattoo she was supposed to. If she refused, she’d have to put a tattoo piece on her body that she didn’t want and, no matter what goes down, having to tattoo yourself in this competition doesn’t look very good. Like I said before, the canvas was a d-bag and wouldn’t work with Julia at all. Most likely, she’d already made up her mind the night before that she was just going to – have to since that d-bag wouldn’t work with her, no matter what – tattoo herself, came up with the best bio-mech design she could, presented it to him while hoping he’d agree, and, when he refused, resulted to tattooing herself, just like she thought she’d have to. She only got rude with him and told him to go f*** himself because he seriously wanted that free tattoo and wouldn’t leave her alone after she told him she was just going to tattoo herself. She needed to focus on getting her tattoo done and he was bothering her. He deserved to be told to f*** off.
      And anyone with half a brain would realize that. Just like anyone with half a brain would realize that the judges totally went after Julia the next week. They went into the next week knowing that they were going to eliminate Julia no matter what her tattoo looked like because they didn’t like the way she handled her canvas the week before. She definitely didn’t have the worst tattoo of the night – I live with 6 people and we all agree on that – and didn’t deserve to go home for that. I lost all respect I had for the judges after watching the way they treated her. What they did was f***ed up.
      - scud32
        November 3, 2014 @1:19 pm
        I agree that the judges play it sneaky this time, and that is not a first. It was also convenient not to describe what Mark wanted during the canvas presentation before handing the skulls.
        However I still believe that Julia did not do all she could (or at least not shown) to make sure that mechanical tattoo would be a problem. After all, in the end Angel was blamed for readability of his piece and not for the mechanical elements.
njhooligan
October 22, 2014 @11:33 am
Am I the only long time Ink Master watcher that feels the show has taken a talented skill and degenerated it into a trashy “Jersey Shore” reality show? Especially, in my opinion, for the last 3 years? People respect artists, such as painters, musicians, tattooers, etc because we don’t “give a f'” about anything othet than our “calling”. When you start hearing people say “So, you really think you’re top 5”, or “Me and him (and its ALWAYS a him) are the frontrunners”, you dilute your talent. Going against the grain in the arts means “you do without to do what you want”. When everyone gets money crazy, or label crazy, you are nothing more than the 9-5ers that would sell their soul for a few extra bucks, a trait of the less talented members of society. Unfortunately, that’s who the show has been attracting; suburban “working class” wannabes who love working class culture, but must maintain their middle class lifestyle they’ve become accustomed too. Cleen doesn’t act like “a poor kid” who’s been through alot. At least by my definition per my life and experiences with being “po’ folk”; being born in the L.E.S of Manhattan on B St. in the late 70s early 80s. However, for entertainment, it is still “fun” though
- J
  October 23, 2014 @10:07 pm
  a lot.