For me, Season 11's winner was unexpected but well-deserved.

There are no style-specific asks (black and grey, traditional, Japanese, etc), and the canvases all have their minds changed into getting whatever their artist wants. No contestant is pushed outside of their comfort zone, so what's the point?

It's like they said in one of the episodes, if you're not versatile, it makes you a great tattooer but not an "Ink Master".

I've been binge-watching Ink Master, and some of my crushes are:

• Dave Navarro: Obviously.

• Kelly Severtson: He is so calm and nice, I bet he would play DnD with me.

• Anthony Michaels: so smooooooth...

• Matti: He is also hilarious.

• Bubba Irwin: He is handsome, and I like the quiet type.}

That's what I can remember right now.

Hello, lovely people from Hobby Drama, do you guys have any tattoos? I have two. Got them after a long time of carefully thinking about what I've wanted to put in my body forever. Well, image a reality show that's all about tattoo artists. And all the times they fuck up.

Welcome to Ink Master.

But today we're not talking about all the awful and gorgeous tattoos that the show has produced. No, today we're here to discuss one of the judges and his terrible personality. Without further ado, here's the story of Oliver Peck.

What is Ink Master?

Ink Master is a reality show competition with tattoo artists. Each season, contestants compete in various challenges, one of them being a four to six hours tattoo session with a random person, the canvas culminating in a finale with a Master Canvas meant to showcase the artist's talent and style.

Now, here's the thing about Ink Master, sometimes people will get terrible tattoos. It makes sense, doesn't it? Contestants who win the first challenge get to assign the canvases and, therefore, the designs to other artists. If, for instance, you know your competition doesn't know how to do color well, you'll assign them someone who wants a fully colored tattoo.

Most of the drama comes from that. For example, one tattoo artist, , was given a The problem was that the canvas wanted it in a place where it'd be incredibly hard to tattoo, as his sink was loose. If Sausage were to tattoo there - he convinced the guy to change spots - it'd probably land him in the bottom.

The show even had a spin-off called with canvases unhappy with their tattoo. A lot of comes from that spin-off as well.

As of today, the show is judged by winner , and , but it used to be judged by , and , who this post is all about.

The tattoo industry and its racism

As previously mentioned, Ink Master encourages sabotaging other competitors. They can occur in a myriad (nice!) of ways: loose skin, canvases with low pain tolerance, canvases who want a tattoo that'll take longer than six-hours. And skin color. by creator celle exploring it (the whole video is a work of art).

This isn't exclusive to Ink Master, though. It's clear that the industry as a whole has a , be its hiring practices (it's harder for POC to get jobs) or the artists' portfolios being composed of mostly white people. As mentioned in the Allure article linked above, during apprenticeships, black folks aren't tattooed regularly and as such artists end up without knowing how to tattoo darker skin.

Quoting from the article:

Jar, a Dominican American tattoo artist living and working in the Bronx, says that the biggest misconception they’ve heard is that people of color, especially those with darker skin tones, can’t get tattooed. She says that a lot of her clients have told her they were previously turned down or told that the colors they wanted in their tattoo wouldn’t work on their skin tone. But Jar debunks that theory, saying that many colors work perfectly well on Black and Brown skin tones, it just takes some additional education to understand which ones. "I decided I wanted to tattoo people of color predominantly because I understand color theory," Jar says.
Layne says she always notices when an artist doesn’t post any examples of their work on clients with darker skin tones — especially when they work in a diverse city like New York or Atlanta. "It’s just really strange that there are artists who want to pretend Black people don’t exist," Layne says. "They want to pretend there are no Black clients, no Black tattoo artists when our ancestors have always done multiple forms of body modification."

So you can see how it wouldn't be much of a surprise if someone, such as a certain Ink Master judge, were to get caught being racist.

Oliver Peck's MySpace photos

Peck was once called the t by the Dallas Observer, a t and was overall loved by many, especially for all the work he'd done for the tattoo community such as starting a tradition of .

He was loved for his joking personality and Texan toothpick, dangling from his lips. Chris Núñez, although with his fair amount of fans, was considered the "mean one" while Dave Navarro wasn't taken too seriously for not being an actual tattooer, just a singer with a lot of tats.

Then, he started getting edited out of the show's compilations on YouTube.

2020 was a bad year for pretty much everyone. Oliver Peck was no exception as found photos of him doing black face posted on his MySpace profile. His Halloween costume has an afro and a big "N" in the middle of his chest (yikes). According to the article, he had also done black face when he dressed up as a Playboy bunny.

Not only that, but Peck used to be married to fellow tattooer who was involved in similar scandals, such as the time when she named a after the word used by . Who also had to for (she has since deleted the post). Honestly, the Kat Von D controversies could write themselves:

It's important to note that it wasn't the first time that Oliver Peck had been accused of something horrible. In 2014, he and fellow judge Núñez were . Robinson, former PA, claimed that:

Peck said things like, "Now Nickie can go home and suck some d***s." She claims Peck also tickled her against her will, squeezed her and pinched her ... and pulled her seatbelt tight against her breasts while she was driving.
She claims Nunez also said tons of perverted crap -- like "Are you menstruating? Do you need a hug?" She says Nunez once asked if she was pregnant just because she was sick, and once explicitly described how his dog eats his wife's dirty underwear.

However, 2014 was a different time back and the #MeToo movement had yet to gather the world's eyes. In 2015, .

Ink Master: where are they now?

After all of this, the show has returned with new judges, though Navarro occasionally pops up during it as the Master Of Caos. Chris Núñez disappeared from the show and I wasn't be able to find any explanation as to why (maybe it has something to do with the sexual harassment, but that's only my speculation).

And Oliver Peck got edited out of every video posted on YouTube, with only his voice being featured, He's still active on Instagram and has an online store which I shall not promote.

Since season 9, this show has been here to make DJ successful. He wasn’t even working with Old Town Ink with Bubba and won the season with an admittedly awesome dragon but also a 50% open skin back piece of a woman’s face. When he came back on the next season, he knew one of the contestants, Josh Payne, literally referred to him in the blind judging as, “my buddy Josh” (recognized his work so well to know it was his friend on a blind judgement). DJ picks Josh for his team, rides him out the whole season as a cheerleader, Josh wins the season and DJ wins the Master Face-Off. His next appearance was a runner-up to lose out on only 25k to future judge, Ryan Ashley. Season 14, DJ conveniently gets to return as a guest with other former winners. He acts like an ass to Anthony, gassing him up to return when he just got custody of his kid. DJ then wins the finale with a piece not too far from the style of season 15’s Freddy, who apparently makes DJ want to puke. In season 15 another one of DJ’s “Buddies” is here, Bobby. Bobby coasts to the finale doing basically neo-traditional ovals frames with similar color palettes and rarely meeting the challenge requirements, if at all. And who is in the winners judging panel? All of DJ’s buddies…

Apologies if this has been done before, still relatively new to the sub.

What’s your unpopular opinion from the show that you’ll die on the hill for?

I’ll go first: While Jason Clay Dunn wasn’t the best on his season, I think he had the best tattoo at the finale and I’ll fight about this lol

What's something that you have always wondered about Ink Master? Before I was on the show, I believed they were really looking for the best artist and was excited to see where I lined up in that, but quickly learned it was about so much more than just looking for the best artist....

No live audience?? No live tattoo? They barely showed what went into their tattoos, it should have been 2 hours. The finale had no excitement and wow factor. Having their loved ones give them a video call was cheesy and annoying with all them crying. Obviously Bobby won, he didn't put the same thing in every tattoo like Freddy... enough with the linework flowers and jewels buddy!! Yeah Bobby kinda did the same type of tattoo most the competition but I saw Bobby winning from the very first episode. He was the best one out the bunch without a doubt. It was way too predictable, I wish you coulda bet on the show. Cmon draftkings get on that!

Via Twitter:

The hit tattoo competition is coming to #ParamountPlus with all-new episodes later this year. The nation’s top tattoo artists will battle it out for $250,000 and the prized title of “Ink Master,” with challenges unlike ever before.

No further information has been posted about the judges, layout, etc. at this time.

LIVE MAS!

How is any artist supposed to function knowing that, like, eight episodes into the season DJ Tambe could just pop out of a trap door and win the whole thing?

Is the title of Ink Master well respected in the tattoo industry?

I would love to know if ink master is coming back for a 16th season my partner and I love watching it and hope they are bringing out another season

I can't pinpoint exactly what it is, but, everything looks small, everyone looks bored, bland and going thru the motions. It looks like an imitation show or if some neighborgs organized a tattoo contest.

I don't know if it's the editing, the content or the cast, maybe all of it. Changing the judges to coaching to judges and all that mess surely backfired too.

I love this show, I don't want to get it cancelled and that's why I hope the producers learn from this. What do you think is happening?