Recognizing Bad Habits Early (And Why They’re Normal): Your Hidden Superpower, Not Your Shame
Let’s not sugarcoat it—if you’re drawing, painting, playing guitar, or just surviving the “creative life,” you are going to build some nasty habits. We’re not talking about cute quirks. We’re talking chronic wrist death-grip, hunchback posture, same-face syndrome, muddy color addiction, the “smudge it and call it shading” copout, and the infamous “I’ll fix it later” spiral. Everyone does it. The difference between artists who level up and artists who stall out in mediocrity? The smart ones spot their bad habits early and learn to turn them into fuel, not failure.
Confession: Half My Early Art Was Just the Same Three Poses, Same Face, Same Overworked Smudges
I’m not proud of it. But if you dig through my old sketchbooks, you’ll see I was on repeat like a one-hit wonder at a bad wedding DJ gig. My hand cramped, my lines were lifeless, and my “shadows” were just a desperate fog of over-blending. That’s not a sin. That’s how you find your voice—by running face-first into your own bad habits until you start to see them in the wild.
Step-By-Step: Rust Dawg’s Survival Guide to Spotting and Flipping Bad Habits
Step 1: Audit Your Repeats Without Mercy
Flip through your last 20 pages, 20 songs, or 20 whatever.
Do you draw the same head angle every time? Are all your hands hidden? Is your color palette locked at “sad toast?”
Highlight, circle, or write a curse word next to every repeat offender. This isn’t self-hate—it’s data collection.
Step 2: Name the Habit, Own the Habit
“Death grip on my pencil.”
“Flat faces, no angles.”
“Never draw feet.”
“Always bail at the background.”
“Go-to chords, never try a new rhythm.”
Naming is power. As long as your bad habit is an “oops,” it runs the show. When it has a name, you can wrestle it.
Step 3: Flip the Script—Set the Habit Trap
Make your next five pieces on purpose include the thing you avoid.
Draw ten hands. Paint only backgrounds. Play a weird rhythm until it’s yours.
Mess it up, hate it, try again. There’s no progress without discomfort. Bad habits wither in the light.
Ingredient Hack: “The Left Hand” or “Blind Angle” Exercise
If you always draw with your right, do a session with your left.
If every face is 3/4, force yourself to do five strict profiles and five from below.
If you run from color, do a week of nothing but color bombs—make it ugly, make it loud.
Quick Fixes for the Bad Habit Spiral
Getting frustrated? Keep a “bad habits” checklist in your sketchbook or workspace. Every time you catch one, check it off and try the opposite.
Feeling ashamed? Don’t. Every pro you admire has a graveyard of bad habits they outgrew. You’re just doing the work in public.
Bored by repetition? Collaborate with someone else, or copy a style wildly different from yours—steal their habits for a day.
Personal Confession:
My drawing changed forever when I admitted that my lazy left hand never left my lap, my faces were all cousins, and I’d never drawn a real shoe. Only then could I get weird, get better, and finally start surprising myself.
Dirty Truths: Bad Habits Are Your Trail Markers, Not Your Tombstones
You know the real dirty secret? You can’t avoid bad habits—they’re a sign you’re actually making enough work to find them. If your sketchbook is spotless and all your drawings are “perfect,” congratulations, you’re probably not experimenting at all. The artist who fails to spot their own lazy tricks is the one stuck spinning in creative mud. But the brave bastard who catalogs every recurring disaster? That’s someone about to break through.
Rust Dawg’s Advanced Survival Strategies for Breaking and Bending Habits
1. The Repetition Roast
Draw, paint, or play the thing you hate until you start to enjoy the struggle.
Challenge yourself to make the next ten pages all about your weak spot. Sick of drawing noses? Draw a hundred. Terrified of backgrounds? Fill a whole book.
If it feels awkward, embarrassing, or pointless, you’re in the right place.
2. The Reverse Habit Ritual
Force your brain to rewire. If you always start a page with a face, start with the background instead.
If you always outline first, try blocking in shadows and negative space before any line appears.
Play music in a genre you hate while you work, or use colors that clash so badly you can’t stand it. Break the autopilot.
3. Public Shame = Private Growth
Post your “habit pages” online—call yourself out, ask for roast-level critique, and don’t flinch at the feedback.
Teach someone else the thing you suck at. Nothing reveals blind spots like trying to explain your weakness to another lost soul.
Ingredient Hack: The “Deliberate Sabotage” Drill
Set a timer and forbid yourself from using your comfort move for 20 minutes.
If you always blend, don’t touch your finger or tortillon. If you always use black, ban it for a session.
Notice what panics you. That’s the bad habit begging to be broken.
Why Early Habits Are Actually Your Secret Weapon
Spotting your habits early means you can choose when to use them and when to break free. Some “bad habits” are just overused strengths—hidden tools waiting to be refined. The thing that got you started will hold you back if you never let it evolve.
Personal Confession:
Every time I caught a new bad habit, I felt embarrassed for a day and grateful for a year. The ones I broke made me better, and the ones I learned to master made me unique.
Survival Wisdom: Don’t Kill Every Habit—Learn Which Ones to Tame and Which Ones to Weaponize
1. Not All Bad Habits Need to Die
Some “bad” habits are just part of your DNA. Maybe you always sketch thick outlines, always add a certain color, or end every song on a weird chord. That’s not necessarily failure—that’s signature. Learn to use it intentionally instead of letting it rule you by accident.
2. Rotate Your Weaknesses into Strength
Set a schedule: each week, attack a new habit. Maybe it’s drawing feet, or using pure yellow, or writing lyrics that don’t rhyme. Don’t let any weakness grow roots—give every demon its turn in the light, and they’ll all shrink in power.
3. Make a Game Out of Bad Habits
Create bingo cards or a drinking game for your own fails. Did you draw a head too big? Take a shot. Another mud-colored background? Cross off a square. Laugh at your own patterns, and suddenly, they’re not so scary.
Ingredient Hack: The “Copycat & Critique” Challenge
Find an artist you love—or hate—and copy one of their pieces line-for-line.
As you copy, make notes on their habits and your own. What do you both overuse? What do they do differently?
Analyze, adapt, and steal only what works for you. Reject the rest, or twist it into something new.
Quick Fixes When Old Habits Die Hard
Pair up with a brutally honest friend. Swap art, critique each other’s repeats, and roast each other’s laziness with zero mercy.
Use constraints: one tool, one color, one subject, or one page a day with a “forbidden move” list.
When you relapse, don’t rage-quit. Every time you notice a habit in action, that’s a win. You saw it—that means you’re learning.
Personal Confession:
My most “original” style moves were almost always bad habits I just leaned into until they stopped being weaknesses and became trademarks. The trick is knowing when to double down and when to ditch.
Final Word: Bad Habits Are Inevitable—Spot Them, Laugh at Them, and Use Them for Fuel
Look, the only artists without bad habits are the ones who never actually do anything. Every streak of sameness, every shortcut, every muscle-memory cheat you pick up is just another mile marker on the creative road. The trick is to stay awake, keep your ego in check, and never let habit become a cage. When you call out your own patterns—without shame—you’re free to either fix them or turn them into gold.
Your style, your voice, your unique fingerprint? It’s half what you do on purpose and half the habits you tamed along the way. Don’t run from them. Drag them out into the daylight, poke fun at them, challenge them, and, when it makes sense, put them right back into your bag of tricks as a secret weapon. That’s how you evolve. That’s how you stay dangerous.
Confession: Every Level-Up in My Work Came From Facing Down Some Hideous Habit I Wanted to Ignore
I promise, you’ll never outgrow all your creative vices. But the artist who learns to see, adapt, and outwit them is the one who actually gets somewhere. Don’t fight the fact that you’ve got them—fight to make sure they serve you, not the other way around.
Ultimate Survival Wisdom: Watch Yourself Like a Hawk, but Laugh Like a Maniac
Keep a running list of your weirdest, dumbest, laziest habits—make a game of spotting new ones.
Attack them one by one until they’re tamed, replaced, or transformed.
Wear your quirks and scars with pride—they’re proof you’re in the arena, not on the sidelines.
So here’s to your bad habits—may you spot them early, flip them into strengths, and never let them stop you from making your best, boldest, most brutally honest work.
See Also:
James Clear’s “Atomic Habits” (for hacking any life habit)
“Art & Fear” by David Bayles & Ted Orland (for surviving the struggle)
Danny Gregory’s “How to Draw Without Talent” (for getting out of ruts)
#badartmoves and #breakthehabit on Instagram for hilarious, honest inspiration