When I walked into the recording studio, I felt at home. I've played music most of my life. I designed simple demo art for my previous bands a couple times, but not fully rendered album art. My inspiration for the Flash Challenge was mannequin zombie domination!

I've done a few fun commemorative tattoos of rad artists. I have done a couple of Michael Jackson pieces, a Billy Idol portrait, and some pieces inspired by great artists such as Dali, Munch, Alphonse Mucha, and more. When I found out I was going to be doing a tribute tattoo of Michael Jackson, I was really excited as I am a big fan and have done a few other MJ tattoos before.

As for my inspiration behind the tattoo, Michael is a rare "larger than life" figure in society. He is obviously an icon and somewhat of a glorified man, which to me, is similar to the glorification of religious figures in history. I thought it would be cool to do something like that of a Catholic saint piece of art for this particular tattoo.

I wish I had more time for the Ink Challenge but then we found out Jermaine Jackson was the guest judge. He was the only non-tattoo artist guest judge that I was okay with at that point.

It felt nice to win the Flash Challenge and Ink Challenge this week, but I'm still on edge because Jon and Alexis are excellent artists. I feel like me, Alexis, and Jon are a good representation of the best tattoo artists in the competition. Things might be different if Roman were still here, but I feel very strongly that the best artists are left on the competition.

I was a bit bummed by the Flash Challenge where we had to sketch Kim. It was terribly bright and she moved a lot. I treated it as a simple study, and I was relatively happy with my sketch. It was tough, given the circumstances and conditions. When they told us the advantage would be the only vote at elimination I thought, this should be interesting.

To make a good portrait tattoo, you really need a good reference photo. My photo was terrible for the Ink Challenge. It had no definitive detail and no good values to decipher from in the photo.

I agreed with Joe when he told us we all needed to start performing. I also agreed to an extent that to be a good tattoo artist you need to be able to do every type of tattoo. Great tattoo artists can do a bit of everything but I don’t think that any one person can master all genres of tattooing. But I certainly think being well rounded and versatile in your artistry will help you in being a versatile tattoo artist.

I didn't mind being in the bottom three because I knew I wasn't going home. Joe knew my reference photo was bad and I still did a nice tattoo.

My wife, who was at the time my fiancé, and my mom were big inspirations for me during the Flash Challenge. The concept of marriage was on my mind and that’s what I went with. It was a hard challenge though. Markers do not work well on canvas. So I wasn't able to draw or render anything as well as I wanted to. I thought about joining Roman when he quit! The tools we were given were not easy to work with. Most of us agreed it was all one big mess.

When we were given the Ink Challenge, I was looking forward to it. I had a client who came from Canada to get a memorial portrait tattoo of his daughter who died from a degenerative disease. The strength and optimism that he and his family showed was inspiring. He is a great guy who truly loves his family and lovely daughter. I was honored to do that tattoo.

I have to be honest it’s intimidating when Joe comes over to critique our tattoos! Joe is a pretty intense guy. I value and respect his opinion because he is brutally honest and holds tattooing dear to his heart like me. I know he was analyzing every detail of my work so it was definitely a bit nerve-wracking each time.

I was pretty pleased with my tattoo. My client asked for a Japanese-style fu dog tattoo. Even though I love Japanese tattoo art, I am not well versed in all of the strict rules that make up proper Japanese tattoos. I did my best to design my own version of the fu dog while trying to make it flow with my client's other tattoos.

I wasn't surprised by the judge’s feedback. I did nice clean work. I did what I was asked and utilized my time accordingly. The time allotted was minimal but I wanted to make a statement with this piece: big, bold, and vibrant. I felt that I did a nice tattoo that will hold for life.

When Roman announced that he was leaving, I really wanted to go with him. We discussed leaving together because we both were tired of the drama. But I decided I wanted to stay. I told him that we made it this far and that we could make it to the finale. He missed his kids and I couldn't talk him out of it. I was bummed because he is my buddy and my biggest competition in the show. I wanted to go to the end with him and do some biomechanical, color portraits and illustrative stuff against him.

Jon and Alexis are my biggest competition at this point. They are doing super clean and really nice tattoos each time. Charlie is smart and knows how to vote and manipulate, though, so she's one to look out for.