- Welcome.
- Morning.
- As the battlefield thins,
the competition gets
more intense,
and you must fight even harder
to win the war.
Only one of you
will earn $100,000,
a feature in "Inked" magazine,
and the title of Ink Master.
Week after week,
some of the fiercest
male and female veteran artists
will return to coach each team.
- Who's it gonna be this week?
- I just hope they're good at
whatever the hell we're doing.
- Yeah.
- And this week,
both your coaches
have been through
this competition not once
but twice.
- What?
- Bubba Irwin.
- Nice.
- And Sarah Miller.
- Yeah.
- What?
- Hey there.
Hey, girls.
- All right, yeah.
- Welcome back, guys.
- Good to see you guys.
- Good to be back.
- Coaches, your team's survival
is on your shoulders.
Save all your artists
from elimination,
and you will earn a spot
in the Clash of the Coaches
face-off for $25,000.
- That's awesome.
 Since I started
 this competition,
I feel like
I've only progressed.
 And so a chance to tattoo
 against these titans
that this competition created
in the finale
would be a dream come true.
- To defeat the enemy,
you must know the enemy,
so Bubba will coach
the women's team,
and Sarah will coach
the men's team.
Go ahead and join your teams.
- I don't know if the guys
are gonna be able
to put down their ego
and actually listen to me.
 I'm bringing knowledge
 and experience to the table.
It's up to them if they can
let their egos go and use it.
- This week,
we're testing legibility.
- Ooh.
With legibility,
it's really important
that a work of art is readable
and that there's no questions
on what it is.
- For this flash challenge,
you must create a masterpiece
out of nothing but wire.
- How the [bleep]
we gonna do that?
- In this room is over 10 miles
of various colors and gauges
of wire.
You must think outside the box
to shape
this malleable
yet unruly material
into an incredible work of art.
- Get your hands ready, ladies.
- Whatever you make,
it needs to be clear
as to what image
you're trying to convey.
It needs to be legible.
It's not an abstract challenge.
- You will have six hours,
and your time
starts... now!
 [dramatic music]
- I got some really good
ideas, you guys.
- So do we.
- What are they?
- We were thinking
the solar system.
 - Today,
 we're testing legibility,
 so we're looking
 for these artists
to do something big and bold
that's easily readable
with a lot of creativity.
- What I kind of want to do
is, like,
do, like, a real quick powwow.
I want to make sure
that you guys win.
- Basically, they're gonna
be sculpting with wire.
- A freestanding, like,
retro spaceman and/or alien,
like, [bleep] rocket ships
and shooting stars.
- Okay, that's a cool idea.
- I hope these artists
are wired properly,
because they're gonna be pushed
to their limits.
- I was thinking
three-dimensional guitar
coming from the top
but, like, skewed.
 I've never worked
 with wire before.
I didn't even think
that was an art medium.
- Would you want to build it,
like, freestanding?
- Attach it to the top
and kind of go angled.
- Good idea.
- Yeah.
 - Thank God
 I'm coaching the women.
 Coaching guys would be
 a [bleep] disaster.
Guys just have
these giant [bleep] egos.
- I think you could get
something really well
if you had, like,
a floating sun,
and then if there was, like,
an astronaut, like,
floating off to the side.
- That's a lot.
 - They are throwing out
 so many different ideas.
I'm trying to just
pull them together
to focus on the best one.
Well, hang on.
We only have six hours.
- Right.
- We just do
a simple spaceship.
It'd be easy
to make that shit look solid.
- I don't think
a rocket's enough.
I really think
we should do an astronaut.
- This is like herding cats.
- The little color pieces,
if you combine them together,
grab the drill,
and you spin the drill,
it'll make thick color,
like, twisted pieces.
- Oh, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, that's sick.
 - The last time
 I hated wire this much
was when I had braces.
- Who do you think you are?
- I might have taken a class
on this.
 Last week, the guys won
 the skull pick
 and took out one of our women.
We cannot let the guys win
again today.
We have to take this.
- You guys want to make it
in two separate pieces?
Like, want to make the body one
and then the neck
a separate one?
- Yeah. Three pieces.
It's gonna be three.
- Our team sucks
working together.
- Do you guys want to make
each string a different color?
- Everyone is trying
to be the leader.
- It'd be cool
if the guitar was a color,
like the bottom part.
- Can't, though,
because we're gonna use
the chicken wire to wrap it.
- It's not gonna be legible.
We should definitely
do something
to make it
so it's not see-through.
- It's gonna have two layers
of chicken wire too,
'cause we're gonna wrap
the back as well,
so that will definitely keep it
from being see-through.
- That's true, that's true.
- Alexis knows everything
about everything,
 guitars and wire.
Am I wrong
for, like, not thinking
that it should be see-through?
- I do like
the see-through idea.
 ♪ ♪
 - I'm annoyed.
 My fingers hurt.
I just don't like it.
- Four hours left.
Four hours to go.
 ♪ ♪
- Just make sure everything
is, like,
as tight to me as possible,
and then do another leg
and create a person,
piece by piece.
I understand the risk
of creating
an anatomically correct
astronaut.
 If even a single hair
 is out of place,
 it's gonna be
 glaringly obvious,
but when we nail this thing,
it's gonna be totally worth it.
I'm literally being used
for my body right now.
- You volunteered.
- Don't let him fool you.
He loves this.
- The Camstronaut.
- We already have one Cam.
Now we're gonna have two.
- Ooh.
- Oh, wow.
- This one doesn't speak.
- They're building
an astronaut.
It's really clean.
- Yo, they were wrapping
Cam in wire there.
- I wish they would wrap
Cam's mouth shut.
- Shots fired.
That was some shade.
[laughter]
- Fulfilling a lot of fantasies
right now.
- Holy Mother of God,
this thing is huge.
- One hour left.
One hour.
- Hey, guys,
we're down to the wire.
[chuckles]
 ♪ ♪
- Uh, where's the planet going?
Like this?
- What if we put it over here?
- 'Cause it's...
right on the edge.
- Yeah, it's not
a complete circle.
- You would never cut out
3% of a circle,
you know what I mean?
- I wouldn't worry
about adding, like,
too much more
to the background, honestly.
This is what I was afraid of.
- That looks pretty good.
- This is the person whose ego
is going to sink this.
- Put that big rock
in the middle
of the--
the two big craggy things.
- Don't worry about
the aesthetics of my rocks.
- He's a [bleep]
rock expert, bro.
- He is a rock expert.
- Five. Four.
Three. Two.
One. That's it.
Time is up.
- Shouldn't it be his last name
if he's an astronaut?
- Whatever, shut up.
[laughter]
- Even when you lose,
that's still really cool.
- Did you see robot me?
- Is that you?
- I was the model--
I was the model
for the Camstronaut.
- Of course you were.
Why wouldn't you have been?
- What's up with
this power cord?
It's not going anywhere.
- If you don't have anything
positive to say,
you should just try
not talking.
That would do us all wonders.
- I've tried so hard.
If you're gonna do a guitar,
it's supposed to be legible.
- Please, for the love
of all things holy,
shut the [bleep] up.
- I love you, Ash.
 [dramatic music]
- All right, it is now time
to critique your work.
Women's team,
let's start with you.
I really appreciate
that you took the care
to make this
a functioning guitar,
with the right amount
of strings,
the right amount
of tuning pegs, the pickups.
- Did you notice
the guitar strings
go from large to small?
- I did notice that.
- You guys did a fantastic job.
- [bleep], yes, coach.
- Hell, yeah, guys.
- How many colors of wire
did we have?
- Yeah, exactly.
- Ten? They used what, two?
- All right, men's team,
you're up.
- The rocket ship's cool,
I like the fire blast
coming out of the tail,
and as far as
the astronaut goes,
I think it's really cool.
It's tough to try to create
a proportionally correct
human figure
out of all this wire.
Came out really strong.
- Thank you.
- I actually didn't know
that that was Earth.
- Stop it.
- Your guitar is not
accurately proportional.
- Your space is not accurate.
- Our astronaut is.
We literally covered this guy.
- What about the Saturn?
Your Saturn is a square.
