Forrest Goodrich

Forrest Goodrich is the kind of artist you find by accident and then can't unsee. You sit through enough Waikiki traditional work and after a while you start picking out his hand on the calf of a guy at a coffee shop — that particular weight on the linework, the planar color, the comfort with a flag-bunting palette that not every traditional artist actually has. Once you've seen him draw a cobra, an eagle, a sacred heart, you know which lineage he belongs to.

The lineage is literal. Forrest is the son of Tim Goodrich — and yes, that's an unfair advantage, but it's also a real apprenticeship that went on for years before Forrest was allowed to put his name on a chair. Second-generation tattooers grow up in shops the way carpenters' kids grow up around tools. You learn the rules before you can articulate them, and then later, when you're allowed to draw your own flash, the rules are already in your hand.

The Ohana years

Forrest is a resident at Ohana Tattoo Company on Saratoga Road, the Waikiki street shop with the 9-AM-to-midnight schedule and the walk-in flash wall that anchors the network's east end. Ohana is the right room for him. It's the kind of shop where a Marine on shore leave can stop by for a single-session traditional anchor at 8 PM, and a kamaʻāina on his fortieth piece can sit down the next morning for a back-of-knee mandala that takes four hours. Forrest works both ends of that spectrum and does both well.

The portfolio shows the range:

• A jade-green King cobra rising on a thigh, framed in pink cherry blossoms.
• A Sailor-Jerry hula girl pin-up with ukulele on a calf — the proportions exact, the motion lines under the grass skirt selling the dance.
• A horned ram in black-and-grey with a single glowing red eye and tongue of flame on an upper arm.
• A diving bald eagle across a chest piece, talons forward, red wingtip flashes.
• A weeping eye trapped in a wooden hourglass, blood-tinted sand pooling — Memento Mori, calf-sized.
• An ornamental mandala fanning down a knee in stippled dotwork.
• A Waikiki "window scene" on a calf: Diamond Head crater, leaning palm, low orange sun, hibiscus in the foreground.

Walk through that list and you can hear the apprenticeship. American Traditional roots, with confidence to step into black-and-grey and ornamental work without losing the bold underlying drawing.

Why fine line, too

Some traditional artists treat fine-line work as a different discipline entirely — "that's not what I do." Forrest doesn't. He treats fine-line as the same drawing skill at a different weight. The underlying composition rules are identical: you still have to understand what reads as a figure, how negative space carries volume, where the eye lands first. Fine line just means the keyline is one needle instead of seven.

That perspective is why Forrest's small commemorative pieces — a single-needle palm tree on an inner bicep, a delicate cardinal on a calf — hold up. The drawing is doing the work, not the technique.

How to book Forrest

Forrest takes appointments through Ohana Tattoo. Walk-ins are welcome — pick something off the flash wall or text ahead with a custom idea and reference. Larger pieces (chest, back, full sleeve) are best booked with at least a week's notice so he can draw the composition.

Further reading

• Ohana Tattoo Company — shop profile
• The American Traditional style guide
• Tim Goodrich — the other half of the family lineage