Making Ugly Art On Purpose (And Why It Helps): Embracing the Grotesque, the Botched, and the Downright Awful—So You Can Finally Make Something Real
Let’s get this out of the way: Every art class, YouTube guru, and Pinterest mom is lying to you. “There are no mistakes in art!” is a load of shit—unless you’ve never actually tried to make something real. The dirty reality? If you’re not making ugly art on purpose—art that embarrasses you, makes you laugh, or makes your skin crawl—you are playing it safe, staying shallow, and robbing yourself of breakthroughs that only the fearless ever reach.
Ugly art is not failure. Ugly art is rebellion, laboratory, therapy, and necessary exorcism. It’s the difference between being a “sketchbook tourist” and a full-blown, scarred-up, whiskey-drinking survivor in the trenches. If you want to get good, you’ve got to get ugly.
Confession: My Best Art Began in Disaster and Dread
There are drawings in my old sketchbooks so hideous, so anatomically broken, so stomach-turning that I kept them just to keep my ego in check. I used to hide those pages, afraid someone would see them and laugh. Now I flaunt them—because each one is a corpse under the foundation of everything I can do now. I needed to make ugly, embarrassing art to discover what was possible, what I loved, and—most importantly—what I sucked at.
Step-By-Step: Rust Dawg’s Rituals for Deliberate Ugly-Making
Step 1: The “30 Uglies in 30 Minutes” Challenge
Set a timer for 30 minutes.
Grab your cheapest paper, the brush that’s falling apart, that old crayon rolling in the junk drawer.
Make thirty drawings, one after the other. Make them fast, wild, reckless. Let the weird ideas take over. Draw with your non-dominant hand, close your eyes, or make faces out of random blobs.
Do NOT “fix” anything. The uglier, the better.
Step 2: Pick Your Poison—What Scares or Disgusts You Most?
Intentionally draw the things you hate drawing—hands, feet, noses, cows, old men, roadkill, the neighbor’s creepy cat.
Exaggerate the badness. Give them five eyes. Make the shadows dirty and the smiles crooked. Push until it makes you uncomfortable.
Draw from the worst reference photos you can find (bad lighting, awkward poses, blurry prints).
Step 3: Break the Rules—On Purpose
Ignore proportion. Make noses as big as heads, limbs the length of spaghetti.
Clash every color. Use markers that bleed, paints that don’t blend, pencils that are almost out of lead.
Fill a whole page with scribbles, crosshatches, or violent color swipes.
Ingredient Hack: The “Ugly Materials” Toolbox
Use junk mail, brown paper bags, or cardboard as your surface.
Paint with sticks, forks, or your fingers. Mix dirt, coffee grounds, or ketchup into your paint.
Don’t just accept the ugly—hunt for it with every tool you can find.
Dirty Reality: Ugly Art Is Honest Art
When you stop trying to impress, you start making real discoveries. Ugly art reveals your weak spots faster than any “pretty” sketch. You see instantly what’s flat, boring, or timid—and you get braver with every disaster.
Personal Confession:
Some of the pieces that collectors drooled over started as a failed, ugly sketch that I abandoned for months. Later, I saw potential where only a mess had been. The ugly is fertilizer for the gold.
The Delicious Perks of Getting Ugly: Growth, Grit, and Zero Expectations
Ugly art isn’t just a humiliation ritual—it’s a shortcut to freedom. You let go of perfectionism, learn to love risk, and train your eyes to see beyond the “rules.” And here’s the devilish secret: ugly art is often the only way to discover your real style. When nobody’s watching, when you’ve already “ruined” the page, you’re finally free to get weird, wild, and honest.
Rust Dawg’s Ugly Art Survival Strategies
1. Ugly Sketchbook, Sacred Sketchbook
Keep one sketchbook that is ONLY for disasters, monsters, and failures. Never let yourself tear out a page. Fill it front to back with mistakes, half-finished faces, wonky anatomy, and tragic color choices. Review it every month—not for self-torture, but to laugh, to learn, and to spot those accidental moments of genius hiding in the wreckage.
2. Rituals of Radical Exaggeration
Pick a subject—self-portrait, cat, lamp, whatever. Now draw it three times:
Once, stretch everything long and thin, like it’s melting.
Once, squash and compact it, as if you dropped it from a ladder.
Once, add something monstrous or silly—a massive nose, bug eyes, crooked teeth, bulging hands.
Ugly? Hell yes. Useful? More than a semester in art school.
3. The “No Undo, No Mercy” Rule
If you screw up, keep going. If you hate the mark, turn it into a tattoo, a scar, a patch, or a shadow. Ugly art trains you to adapt, improvise, and run with chaos. That’s where confidence is born.
Ingredient Hack: Wild Media Mashup
Slam watercolor onto an oily crayon sketch, then attack it with a ballpoint pen.
Glue on a scrap of newspaper or a food wrapper, and draw right over it.
Smudge, stab, splatter, and see what happens.
Why Ugly Art Is the Key to Finding Your Voice
You can copy tutorials, master proportion, and spend years making “safe” drawings. But your real style—the thing nobody else can do—lives on the other side of ugly. When you push past comfort, when you’re not scared to ruin the page, you’ll start to see the shapes, lines, colors, and moves that are uniquely yours.
Personal Confession:
Some of the weirdest “failed” sketches in my old books became the seeds of paintings and comics people remember. The quirks, the wonkiness, the unfiltered energy—those are the fingerprints of a real artist, not a copy machine.
Dirty Truths: The Art World’s Real Heroes Are the Ones Who Embrace the Ugly
Let’s be clear—most of the artists you admire, envy, or hate-follow on social media have a secret graveyard of failures ten times bigger than what you’ll ever see on their grid. The difference? They never let those disasters stop them. They learn, adapt, and—most importantly—have fun doing it. Ugly art is the best teacher. It’s a cold shower for your ego, a boot camp for your skills, and a playground for your inner savage.
Rust Dawg’s Advanced Ugly Rituals for Hardcore Growth
1. Blind Contour Caricature
Draw without looking at your page. No peeking, no erasing. Overlap, twist, stretch. You’ll see the most honest, expressive lines come out of chaos. Use the ugliest ones as a base for full-on paintings.
2. Monster Mash Collage
Cut up your worst sketches—yes, the truly horrifying ones. Rearrange the pieces into new creatures, faces, or abstract monsters. Glue, tape, or just overlay them. Now draw into the Frankenstein’s monster you’ve made. You’ll end up with forms and ideas you never could have invented by playing it safe.
3. “Finish the Disaster” Game
Pick your most embarrassing unfinished page and force yourself to finish it. Go wild. Make it grosser, weirder, or more dramatic. This exercise is pure gold for breaking fear of the blank page and for unblocking creative ruts.
Ingredient Hack: Ugly to Beautiful Flip
Take an ugly drawing and, instead of hiding it, overlay it with something beautiful. Paint flowers over a monstrous face. Layer gold ink on a scribbled mess. Use the ugly as a base for something luminous—sometimes the contrast alone will knock your socks off.
Survival Wisdom: Show Your Ugly Side (Yes, Publicly)
Share a “fail” every now and then on your feed or with your art group. Watch how many people comment that they do the same.
Join or start a “Ugly Art Challenge” with friends or online. Swap your worst pieces and “upgrade” each other’s messes.
Document your process—show the roughs, the rejects, and the misfires. You’ll inspire more people than you realize.
Personal Confession:
The first time I posted a truly hideous drawing, I braced for mockery—and got a flood of love, support, and “me too!” comments. Turns out, ugly art is the great equalizer. It kills ego and connects us all.
Final Word: Ugly Art Is Freedom—And It’s Your Secret Weapon
If you’re not making ugly art, you’re not making real progress. You’re just polishing the same old tricks and hoping nobody calls your bluff. But when you make a mess on purpose, when you dig into the grotesque, the awkward, the loud, and the wrong—you unlock the kind of honesty and originality that makes people stop and stare.
Ugly art is a flex. It’s proof you’re not afraid of failure, that you’re willing to learn in public, and that you’ve got the guts to push past the shallow end of the pool. Every beautiful piece you’ll ever make stands on the bones of dozens—hundreds—of disasters you refused to hide.
Confession: My Best Days in the Studio Start With Making the Worst Art I Can
It loosens me up, burns out the perfectionism, and leaves me open for the real breakthroughs. The world’s already full of fake “flawless” art—what it needs is your weird, raw, ugly magic.
Ultimate Survival Wisdom: Make Ugly, Make Mess, Make Art That’s Alive
Fill your sketchbooks with failures, monsters, and happy accidents.
Laugh at your own disasters, and keep going.
Show the world your weirdness—because that’s where the gold is buried.
So go ugly, go big, and go often. Let your mistakes teach you, fuel you, and surprise you. That’s how you become the artist nobody else can touch.
See Also:
“Creative Block” by Danielle Krysa (breakthroughs from disaster)
Austin Kleon’s “Show Your Work!” (own your process, warts and all)
Lynda Barry’s “What It Is” (embrace the weird)
#uglyartclub and #badartday on Instagram for the brave, the wicked, and the free