Becoming a 3D environment artist

I have researched at length 3D artists that inspire me and all around what it takes to become a 3D environment artist/ Level Designer.
The thing is we need to know first what are the differences between these things? And can you be both?

Environment artist is someone who builds the assets that go into the environment. They model, often texture and sometimes light their environments.

Level designers are responsible for taking the assets that environment artist have created and assemble them into an environment that we can all play in. They design gameplay elements, create scripted events and test gameplay.

The short answer is Yes, you can be both, some games studios may want you to do one or both of these things and me personally I love both of these jobs so i will learn as much as i need to to be able to do these two jobs at the same level and do them fast an efficiently.

 I found a blog about becoming a 3D artist and a person going in to great detail what they did and how they did it to get where they were, it was really inspiring to read and the link is just here below if you would like to check it out-
http://www.worldofleveldesign.com/categories/level_design_tutorials/becoming-level-designer-environment-artist-part1.php

He or she (I'm happy they remain unanimous) tells us how they went about becoming a 3D environment and level designer. First off the started by simply working on their drawing skills, making sure they drew something everyday this over time on the side built up their drawing skills to be able to draw properly for environments, this is something i am going to start doing everyday as i want to learn how to draw technical drawings and floor and elevations plans to a higher level so that i can ultimately be more prepared before i start modelling in Maya.
I think it will benefit me greatly to be able to do this.
Next they spoke about understanding architecture and how things are build this is something i have brushed up on but i do need to look into it more, for example in a realistic game set on 'real life' events lets say call of duty, there has to be a structure to things to make them seem believable in the game, for example you wouldn't have one beam in the middle of a building holding it up like the building was reseting just on that one beam, it wouldn't happen the building would collapse and people playing the game would be able to notice this because its such a logical thing to pick up on.
These tips i will take with me and push my skills and knowledge even more read the blog further to see more of what was said they are a really informative person.