For Wichita artist, a bunny a day keeps the boredom away

Wade Hampton doesn’t have a bizarre obsession with rabbits.

He just likes their form, artistically – simple as that.

“From an artistic standpoint, I think rabbits are the perfect subject if you’re going to draw an animal,” Hampton said. “I don’t have some weird obsession with rabbits, like I’m running around the yard chasing them.”

As a creative challenge, Hampton is drawing a bunny every day for a year and posting the results on Instagram.

Some of his rabbits are cute – the kind with carrots and flowers included – and some are creepy, with dark circles under their eyes and cigarettes dangling from their mouths.

People have enjoyed the project on social media – whenever Hampton shares his drawings on Facebook, they typically garner upward of 150 reactions.

Not bad for quick daily doodles.

“For me, it’s an experiment,” Hampton said. “I know the majority of them are not very good. That’s not a big deal to me. It’s like publicly putting out a sketchbook.”

Hampton is well-known in Wichita for hosting “home shows,” in which he would invite friends and strangers to his home, where the walls were covered with hundreds of doodles like these, all for sale.

While Hampton said he has decided to stop doing the home shows, he wanted to keep his artistic chops sharp – hence the bunny project.

“I did a bunch of shows a long time ago called Art from the Gut, where you just do a bunch of drawings and you don’t really think about it too much,” Hampton said. “The thinking is that if you don’t think about it too much, some magic can happen.”

About three months into the project, Hampton said Tuesday he’s considering putting on a bunny-drawing show at a gallery later this year. Those plans are still in flux, though, so until then, your primary viewing outlet will be at www.instagram.com/drawabunnydaily.

“Hand to God, when I did these, it was totally for an experiment. ... You know me: If I wasn’t doing a show, I’d probably do some kind of video where I burn them all and some guy in a rabbit costume dances around it and call it art,” Hampton said. “It’s nice for these pieces to find a home – otherwise, they just sit in a sketchbook until I die. I’d much rather have somebody say I framed this and stuck it on my wall than it sit in my drawer.”

This story was originally published May 16, 2017 at 6:52 PM with the headline "For Wichita artist, a bunny a day keeps the boredom away."