Best Ink Recap: For the Love of Ink

Tattooing begins and London does an owl with a skeleton key and then a transforming heart as his first two pieces. Jon pulls out a simple rose to match the other flower tattoos his first client has and then he does a hooded hawk carrying a love note on the second. Alexis starts with bleeding hearts and then follows up with a bird shot in the heart with arrows but still alive. Everything goes as well as it can with no big mishaps and the artists end up going out to dinner that night together. Alexis feels like she is already successful because she has a home, her own shop, and a husband but feels that this competition can elevate her status much more. Jon says the pressure of the competition makes him want to push faster and be better and that he is still paying for his student loans from college that he dropped out of. London is honored to be tattooing with the others but he is confident in his work. The signature tattoos begin the next day with Jon doing an anatomical heart on our favorite Skrillex Lesbian Liz. Just a shout-out to Liz for commenting on the Purrfect Ink post and taking the comments in stride. London does a large back piece on Jodee of a woman with a mullet holding an apple. Alexis creates her lantern heart piece on Katie Ann. The artist wrap it all up and we head to deliberations! This week’s guest judge is Margaret Cho whose favorite piece on herself is her Derringer gun on a holster on her leg which makes her feel as if she is always armed. Finally we get some Sabina and she looks like a Barbie doll in her long pink dress. I don’t think she’s even used to being so covered up.

The first three skins come in for Jon and they are Liz, Sylvia and Alli and all three love the work that Jon did. Liz even though you are happily married did Jon still try and hit on you and did it make you uncomfortable? I just get the feeling that he can get pretty skeezy although your husband looks like he could stomp him so yeah. Anyway, Joe liked Jon’s symbolism but wanted more colors in the bird feathers to add more depth. Sabina expected more than a simple rose and Margaret says that Jon’s fear of intimacy has shown through and that he has emotional problems. Jon’s pieces were all over to me and I think that he gave up and just did a rose because he couldn’t think of a third piece. He lucked out that the rest of her arm already had flowers and girls mostly don’t mind flowery pieces. I do have to dink him for putting a damn heart on someone’s thigh because that’s a terrible place. I guess her chest would have been too obvious but maybe a back piece would have worked better? Either way I think that was his only successful piece because the bird was bland.

Jon’s Final Tattoos

Alexis’ skins are Katie Ann, Adria and Joe who all also love their tats and whose tattoos you can clearly see a theme running through. The whole set is consistent although Joe says the backgrounds were not consistent. Margaret says that they are her favorites and that she also has deeply cynical emotional problems which Alexis’ agrees with because they are all based on rough relationships and thank you Margaret…I thought we could get through one episode without Eeyore popping back up. Joe loved the light source idea with the lantern but Sabina says it looks too big and leaves a lot of wasted space around the handle and that the bird should have been her signature piece. I think that Alexis had the best pieces and I really liked her ideas of love shining through even during the bad times in life. I can’t say that I can find fault in any of her work even though the bird background with the poop stink lines were kind of iffy but it fit her theme. The signature piece should have been the bird, I agree, but the lantern with the heart was great it was just placed in the wrong spot.