MILWAUKEE — A Milwaukee illustrator is gaining attention for her portraits of people's butts.
Yes, people pay Rachal Duggan of RADillustrates to draw what she calls booty portraits. Duggan draws human butts, dog butts, cat butts, butts in pants, butts in shorts, butts in underwear, and butts in the nude. Her full-time job is drawing butts.
“So years ago I started doing it sort of as a party trick, and I was drawing my friends, my family, my pets, and it became this thing where people would request it," she said.
However, these aren't caricatures like you would get at a farmer's market. Duggan recognizes that having this portrait done can be vulnerable and revealing for the people paying for it. She wants these illustrations to be about body positivity and acceptance.
“I feel like it’s almost like a celebration or like an acknowledgment of what you have, and where you’re at. I know everybody has a different relationship with their body, and I’m not here to over-exaggerate or make a joke out of something.”
You can get booty portraits of just yourself, you and another person, you and a pet, just your pet, or your entire family.
"It's okay to talk about your butt or other butts in a way of like normalizing that sort of conversation about bodies," she said.
You can choose the level of clothing you want in your portrait. Some people choose to have a completely bare butt, some want a picture of their butt in revealing underwear, and others want a more covered-up look. To be clear, none of the portraits are sexual. They are strictly just drawings of butts. We all have them.
"It’s just a butt," she said.
Duggan has been drawing and illustrating her entire life. She went to Columbia College Chicago to study art and design. However, after graduation, she did more than a decade working for non-profits and in marketing. During the beginning of the pandemic, she lost her job. That is when she decided to try and give - what was her side hustle - her undivided attention. She hasn't looked back since making the switch.
"Yea it's just something that people really identify with and get excited about, and so that keeps me doing it," she said.
To get a butt picture, you go to her website, buy the package you'd like, pay for the service, and then send in your reference photos.
“Yea, I end up having like a million cat butt photos that I’m like oh that’s so funny. I still have that. That's like tucked in the corner on the desktop like time to delete that," she said.
Duggan also does live drawings at festivals and events. It only takes a minute for her to draw those photos.
“And I’ll be out in the wild and somebody will see me and be like, 'You drew my butt in 2016!' And I'm like woah.”
While Duggan does this partially to promote body acceptance, it's also just for fun. She said that these illustrations can mean as much as you'd like them to.
