Ink Master Coloring Book Paperback – June 27, 2017

First off, I love Ink Master. I have two tattoos from season 3 winner Joey Hamilton. So when I saw this on Amazon, I had to buy it ASAP! And overall, I love the book! It has a full color photo introducing each artist with a short bio. Then immediately following that is the corresponding line art. Seeing the line drawing makes me realize the amazing blending and shading techniques these artists have developed. I am glad that the line drawings are raw and uncut, because it gives me a blank canvas to improve my own shading and blending skills. As I have a lot of room for improvement in this area, I'm glad I have a book of art I enjoy so much to work on. I know that all the illustrations will make me strive to be better!The paper is nice and thick (probably 65 lb or a bit thicker) and has a decent amount of tooth. The color photos are crisp. There are an amazing 87 (!!) illustrations to color and 128 pages total and two pages of high quality temporary tattoos from the show. That's a great value for what a great quality of a book. Please not that the pages are printed on both sides, so you'll want to put away the alcohol based markers because they will bleed through.Ok, now the points I must bring up. At first glance, I was a bit surprised at how raw the illustrations are. They have crooked lines and lines that have been gone over more than once because of an error. I thought to myself, "they couldn't clean up the drawings a bit and make the lines super thin and crisp like typical coloring books?" But then I looked through the book a couple of times. And the more I looked at the drawings, the more comfortable I was with the quality. It's a book of tattoo art: it shouldn't be highly refined and digitized to death. It should feel a bit rough and tumble. Its a stencil; the artist always cleans up any stray lines while tattooing. And the line weights should be thick, especially with new school art: lines are the bones of a tattoo, and they must be visible a mile away because that's what lasts the longest and makes the tattoo visible from afar. Also, I agree with the other review that some of the illustration choices are a bit odd. I thought more "Tattoo of the Day" pieces would be included. All I can think of is that because of copyright or show production reasons they were limited on which pieces they could include. There are a couple of pieces in the book that received pretty harsh critiques on the show. However, there is no coloring book that you love every single piece in... and I can see myself coloring the majority of the pictures.So all in all, if you like tattoo art, are looking for illustrations that are very open for blends and shading, or are a fan of the show, this book is a great purchase. I don't write many coloring book reviews, but I wanted to write a thorough review to share more information since there aren't many reviews on this book yet. Enjoy!

My packaged arrived on time. The book is great! The artists' information pages and coloring sheets are of great quality. What I especially love about the book is the temporary tattoos it includes, all of which are based on actual tattoos from the show. I definitely recommend this product to all Ink Master fans!

I couldn't wait to start coloring in this book. Even some of the Tats look so great that they are making me want another tat. Loving this book. Just love love love loving this book.

THOUGHTS: I am obsessed with Ink Master. I love the show and have been watching it from the start religiously. Which is why I take issue with some of the choices they made for this coloring book. Being an avid fan, I have developed an eye for good art and good tattoo compositions. When I got the book I opened it up to see that there were a few bad compositions that were put in the book. If you go and watch the judges critiques on some of the pieces you will get a feel for why the composition is bad. There are some dope pages though that you can color in and have fun doing so. Not sure why Ink Master didn't use some of the judges work. I feel like if they had done a page each on just american traditional flash and Japanese traditional flash, it would have tied the book together. I feel they missed an opportunity on that.PROS: Thick pages makes the book feel thick. Has a nice soft outer paperback cover. Pages are very smooth as well. Sharpies and Markers should do fine, I used watercolor pens for my book. Comes with temporary tattoos for the 90s kids.CONS: Choices in terrible designs out of the many many challenges that Ink Master has done across 8 seasons. (Now on 9th). Has temporary tattoos in a weird spot in the book...2/3rds the way in.OVERALL: I like the book and bought 2 copies for me and my girlfriend. There are obvious improvements that could have been done in terms of art selection. I feel like the judges were not consulted about what should go in this book. But its still enjoyable and for 11 dollars, I can't complain too much.

I love looking at the pictures in the book but I have not colored any because o don’t want to mess them up. Does that make me crazy LOL I would like a second edition

This was a gift for my husband and he loves it . No dislike at all .

For fans of the show this coloring book is awesome. It also comes with some really cool temp tattoos. My daughter loved it. I Hope they release another one with works from the more current seasons.

Love Ink Master show. This was appealing due to the info. about the individual artists which is actually a short paragraph. Some tattoo drawings are detailed, some not so much. The decision to place images on both sides of a page basically makes this unusable for anyone but the lightest color pencil artist. Otherwise, if you transfer images to artist paper for your work this is more versatile.

Amazing coloring book tattoos are just like the show