The profession of artist has often been a tragic one, with countless promising careers cut short by mysterious wasting illnesses, mental instability, or suicide. Humans have concocted many an explanation for this phenomenon, but not until modern chemistry were the dangers of their pigments fully appreciated; Shroodle has cast a very long pall over the history of art.
Shroodle are natural painters, who crawl all over forests with their small, painted legs and brush-like tongue, and are often used for detail work by their Grafaiai parents as well. That humanity would take inspiration from and seek to emulate such brilliant images was no surprise; that they did not realize these were poison pokemon was understandable, given the long timescales on which their weak venom acts.
Yet the fact that this was an accident born of a poor understanding of medicine provided little solace to the people of Paldea and the adjoining regions, which had developed an entire trope of the dying artist to account for what was in truth countless cases of fatal poisoning. It was Shroodle, long sought after for their pigments, who paid the price for humanity's mistake; nature's finest drawings were burnt, and a beloved studio mate overnight turned into a hated pest. Only the pleas of a few old masters saved the Tagtree Thicket itself from annihilation, and what had been a widespread pokemon was now restricted to that forest, although painters are the only humans known to ever actually suffer from the health effects of Shroodle venom.
Paints today are sourced from berries, or occasionally from Smeargle, so the once devastating Shroodle Syndrome has gone the way of smallpox. Human artists often venture out to the Tagtree Thicket for inspiration these days, although those who know their history are wary about remaining for long.