@niels What I've found personally is that "not feeling right" feeling your describing seems at the end of the day to be growth happening, at least from what I've found. I'm not super comfortable with it and it's not my default way of doing things, but the more I do things that don't quite feel right, I end up folding little tid-bits into my process that end up looking right once I've had a chance to "Josh-ify" them for lack of a better term.
I think ultimately that's what we're after when we do things like master studies or do things in other people's styles, right? I mean, in the end we're not going to draw, paint or finish things like who we're copying, but we're definitely got to take some of those characteristics back into our own work.
If I didn't do anything else I feel like most of my stuff would end up rendering out the same basic way, which I guess in the end is what we're describing at all with our style. But the more I push and look at things I don't always do, and add technique, the more tiny little things make their way into the process. It has the same flavor, but I can definitely tell I'm using a far bigger box of tools to get the job done now compared to years ago.