Who is the top artist in the whole wide world of tattooing?

A diificult question to answer because different tattoo artists specialize in different areas. Some are really good at flash designs, but not so steady of hand in technique. Some are good in tattoos associated with cultures such as Chinese, Aztec, Hawaiian, Japanese, Polynesian and Maori designs.

Others may be the best in a particular type of tattoo designs, such as tribal, flower, old school, angels or dragons. There are tattoo artist who are known to work on celebrities, but then the famous and the infamous are largely self-centered pinheads so do you want to listen to who they think is the greatest--of course you do.

Not surprisingly, the medium of the tattoo is important, henna tattoos, temporary tattoos and permanently inked tattoos require different skills, blah, blah, blah.

Anyhow, after all these caveats, here are some award winning artists in their career of tattoology. These are just based on awards from magazines, conventions, online sources.