The Arterview: Nastyjungle

Well anyways, my name is Nastyjungle... People call me Nasty or NJ. I live in the little city of Topeka, Kansas. Basically smack dab in the middle of the United States, for those not familiar.

I wasn't familiar. In fact, I couldn't remember how I'd gotten here. Maybe I was dreaming, Inception-style. No, wait. If I was dreaming then the farmer wouldn't have been transporting fertiliser.

My cousins, mostly. They were both pretty big Pokemon fanatics, and one day they lent me Blue to take home and play. I was hooked immediately. Though I was still pretty young and had trouble reading some of the text in-game, I still managed to stumble my way through it. I've been playing ever since, and don't see myself stopping anytime in the near future. (I remember being really excited by getting Cut because I wanted to cut down all the trees to see what was past Pallet Town, I was pretty disappointed when I found out how it really worked...)

It was around the beginning of 4th gen, I had a Tangrowth and for whatever reason I decided to look up what moves would be good on it. The first thing I clicked on was a Serebii analysis what-have-you, and I read about all of the competitive stuff. From there I got into competitive play and of course found Smogon somewhere along there. I've been lurking ever since, but only decided to recently make an account. I still play competitive mons, but I'm a bit sporadic about attempting to actually ladder.

I've been drawing basically ever since I can remember. When I was a kid and everybody else was playing with their blocks, all I wanted was some paper and a pencil. I pretty much despised coloring books because I felt like I couldn't be creative - with a blank sheet I really felt in control. Since then, I've taken the basic Middle School classes and am ready to start some more advanced High School courses.

I've been drawing basically every day since I could hold a pencil, but it was mostly for fun and I really wasn't that great for a long time. Art is really 99% practice and 1% talent. Eventually I practiced enough that I started to get good, and then it was all uphill from there. I wouldn't say I'm a child prodigy at all, just someone with a lot of love and determination for what I do.

I'd call my style a mixed bag of every other artist I've ever admired. If there was an artist (or even just a single piece of art in particular) that I really enjoyed, I'd take a good look and decide what I liked about it most. Then I'd try to imitate whatever I liked with the next drawing I did, while adding other techniques and flavors that I'd found in the past. This all compounded into what I do today: other people's influence mutating into something all my own. Even now I get inspired and completely change up how I do things.

I much more prefer working with the pen/brush tool. I can appreciate the pixeled look but there is true elegance to be had in smooth lines! I do like to change things up so doing both is fine with me. Textures are a good way to slap on some flavor to a picture, making good things great and lazy things look slightly less horrible.

In my most perfect of worlds, art will be my profession. In less perfect worlds, I'll be doing something else (most likely engineering) and art will have to be just a hobby. Either way, I'm nearly 100% certain that I couldn't give up art entirely, considering how much I enjoy it and how much of my life I've poured into it.

Venusaur, always. People from Smeargle's Studio know that Budew was kind of my gimmick at first, but I don't think it even places in my top 10 favorites... Venusaur has always just been so appealing to me for some reason, especially that big old tree-flower-thing on its back. It would be so awesome to sit on top of that behemoth and chill under its shade. Musharna and Ho-Oh are both tied for a close second, though.

That's like choosing between cheesecake or ice-cream... too difficult of a decision, and I'd rather have both. ;)