High school training in various art subjects provided an excellent learning environment. In the third year of high school, on his sister’s recommendation, he discovered J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. That became an immediate new focus for him. After graduation, he soon landed a job as an apprentice architectural renderer. he got the job by showing a flair for this type of illustration, though it was not something he had studied previously. After working there for several years he deciding to carry on in a freelance capacity after the studio was dissolved. Though his work, especially in terms of the Tolkien art, has since diversified, he still has a hand in architectural rendering.

Discovering Tolkien, meanwhile, had a very profound effect on him. It opened up in him a dormant love of lost and misty times, myth and legend. Nasmith says that "Not since childhood had I felt such a sense of ‘home’, unaware of the effects the intervening years had had in displacing it. I began immediately to draw scenes inspired by this magical, nostalgic realm, becoming absorbed for many hours at a time. Tolkien and the drawings were an important influence, blunting some of the temptations of those years, and the excitement of depicting Middle-earth never seemed to diminish."

With much encouragement from friends and family, Nasmith atempted to get his work published during the seventies, but met with liitle success. Inspired again by the The Hildebrandts’ three calendars in 1976, ’77, and ’78, he now began to define his own style, echoing luminist landscapes and Victorian neo-classical works which he felt would compliment the grandeur of The Lord of the Rings

In time he became a member of The Tolkien Society, having discovered their whereabouts from a notice printed inside an art book of Joan Wyatt Tolkien paintings. With encouragement from them he again approached Tolkien’s publishers. This time they responded positively, offering to include four of his works in the 1987 compilation calendar. Breakthrough at last!

Other calendars followed, as well as use of his work on the covers of paperback editions of The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit. In October of ’96, just after returning from the UK, he received a faxed letter from Tolkien’s publishers asking if he was interested in illustrating The Silmarillion - the first illustrated edition of this largely unsung masterwork.

This new illustrated version of The Silmarillion was published in the fall of ’98, and proved to be another significant step for Nasmith in achieving success and recognition as a Tolkien artist. However, The Lord of the Rings remains his ‘first love’, and the commission to paint three successive Tolkien calendars for 2002, ’03 and ’04 has allowed him to return to it.

Aside from his career as an illustrator, he has a musical side. From adolescence on he has been a guitarist and singer, writing many songs (some Tolkien inspired), as well as performing as a tenor in several choirs, both worship and concert oriented.