Cathleen McAllister | LBX 816
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cafween.bsky.social
Cathleen McAllister | LBX 816
@cafween.bsky.social
4.8K followers 330 following 300 posts
Vis Dev Artist for Animation ✨ Repped by Azantian Literary Agency (she/her) [email protected]

www.cathleenconcepts.com
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cafween.bsky.social
Happy New Year everyone! It's been a busy year, finished my field guide on drawing plants, started a new job, and went to a ton of weddings. Grateful for my friends and family and hoping to share more art in the new year!
December 31, 2025 at 7:33 PM
cafween.bsky.social
Merry Christmas everyone 🎄✨
December 25, 2025 at 10:38 PM
cafween.bsky.social
My store is open for the next week! If you have an aspiring (or established) artist in your life who would be interested in learning how to draw plants, consider buying my book as a gift for them! cathleenconcepts.com/shop
a spread from my book about drawing plants. these pages explain different types of and how to apply texture to tree trunks
December 12, 2025 at 9:34 PM
cafween.bsky.social
if you bought a book last week, it has been shipped! there's still a few left so grab yours before they're gone
November 8, 2025 at 6:35 PM
cafween.bsky.social
✨ My shop is live! ✨ You can now buy my book about drawing/painting plants along with postcards and stickers on my website: cathleenconcepts.com/shop
November 3, 2025 at 6:12 PM
cafween.bsky.social
my books are here! come grab your copy and learn how to draw a plant at Lightbox Expo (Oct 24th-26th). If you can't make it, don't worry I will be selling them online afterwards! Stay tuned
book titled Everything I know About Plants: An Artist's Guide by Cathleen McAllister
October 7, 2025 at 7:44 PM
cafween.bsky.social
thank you!! I got my first book cover job cause they liked my portfolio for animation. I only get a couple illus. jobs a year (I work fulltime in animation) but it helps to have some paintings with a central figure, bright colors, and some vertical compositions. (more in the alt text...)
These are some of my paintings that AD's frequently cite when they launch me on a cover illustration. This one is fanart of Garth Nix's book Sabriel. It's got 2 large central figures, and I think AD's can imagine where text would go (even though it's a horizontal composition!) this is another one that gets picked as reference often. You can imagine text would go in the large keyhole. For most of the cover illustrations, it's helpful to have a big "empty" space (where the values and details aren't too complex) for text. Striking compositions and bright colors are helpful.
September 25, 2025 at 6:18 PM
cafween.bsky.social
BOOK COVER ARTISTS!

QRP with your #BookCovers
cover illustration for The Traitor Moth by Katharine Orton. A brown, spotted moth holds a nettle branch in front of a full moon. He is standing on a tree branch with wasps and his two moth companions in the background. Orphans of the Tide by Struan Murphy. A beached whale at the base of a gothic city sticking out of the ocean The Mossheart's Promise by Rebecca Mix. Two fairies inside of a terrarium, surrounded by rotting plants, mushrooms, and an isopod The Ghostwing's Lie by Rebecca Mix. A fairy standing in a broken glass terrarium, surrounded by plants, bugs and a newt.
September 25, 2025 at 5:37 PM
cafween.bsky.social
qrp with something watery!
September 8, 2025 at 6:40 PM
cafween.bsky.social
Alien (1979)
September 7, 2025 at 5:24 PM
cafween.bsky.social
my flower stickers arrived! Will be selling these at Lightbox Expo, and then online (early Nov!)
a sheet of flower stickers featuring angel's trumpet, star thistle, golden stars, bindweed, lavender, thistle, rose, bougainvillea, and coneflower. Arranged in rainbow order
August 21, 2025 at 4:05 AM
cafween.bsky.social
found a bite mark in the gym equipment today lol
absolutely feral bite mark on the back of the chest supported row machine
August 20, 2025 at 4:17 PM
cafween.bsky.social
Cover reveal for my book all about drawing plants! It will be available for sale at Lightbox Expo in October, and then anything remaining will be available online. Can't wait to share this book with you all!
A book cover titled "Everything I Know About Plants: An Artist's Guide" by Cathleen McAllister. The cover is mostly green and full of all sorts of leaves
August 4, 2025 at 8:33 PM
cafween.bsky.social
Flowers! Here are some vignettes for my upcoming book Everything I Know About Plants. I'll be selling it at Lightbox Expo, and then anything leftover will be available online! In the coming months I'll post some more sneak peaks
white background with colorful flowers arranged in kind of a grid; pink bindweed, purple lavender, thistle, red rose, star thistle, coneflower, angel's trumpet, and golden stars a pink-lemonade variety of bougainvillea, trained into an arch in a ceramic pot. there's a close-up detail of one of the flowers to show its anatomy a close up, painterly image of a lavender blossom. behind it are blurry, softer versions of the lavender blossom
July 14, 2025 at 9:02 PM
cafween.bsky.social
a summery painting of a forest 🌿 you can learn my process for painting this scene in my upcoming book about drawing and painting plants, which I'll be selling at Lightbox!
digital painting of a very green forest with moss covered oak trees, sunlight shining through leaves, a bluebell-ish flower, and ferns
June 26, 2025 at 3:26 PM
cafween.bsky.social
an oldie from 2017 ish!
for all you nerds, it's fan art of Demacia from League of Legends lol! It's a giant bridge leading up to a castle that's a mix of Byzantine architecture and some other styles
June 16, 2025 at 11:49 PM
cafween.bsky.social
I love applique, I love textile art, beadwork, woven wire art, I love how much people love depicting little creatures aahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
applique on fabric depicting a bunch of little animals in bright colors, forgot what country this was from applique of a ton of brightly colored cats killing what looks like a goat beaded art of people on horses telephone wire art of a ton of leaves and flowers, looks like stumpwork (not sure if that's the right word, but the leaves are 3d and sticking out)
May 21, 2025 at 4:57 PM
cafween.bsky.social
I went to the International Museum of Folk Art while in Santa Fe and I'm still not over it. Seeing these beautiful tiny things lovingly made by hand for centuries, all from different cultures, was really uplifting with the looming threat of AI. AI could only dream of making something so cool
trinkets, jewelry, and other little heirlooms from Sri Lanka, Italy, Brazil, Lebanon, Iran, Ethiopia, and Mexico, arranged in frames for each country. some are carved out of bone, and some are pressed into silver a diorama of a town square made from figurines from Mexico. There's a large tower in the middle and tiny carvings of people hanging out around it
May 21, 2025 at 4:52 PM
cafween.bsky.social
I'm working on a "how to draw/paint plants" book (title TBD) to sell at Lightbox! here's a sneak peak at one of the pages on painting bark texture.
step by step tutorial on how to paint two different kinds of bark, a Japanese Stewartia tree with peeling bark, and a palm tree which has "pseudobark" where the texture is created by the base of fronds that have fallen off
April 3, 2025 at 10:17 PM
cafween.bsky.social
April 3, 2025 at 9:56 PM
cafween.bsky.social
I'm looking for my next gig! Keep me in mind for all your visual development and illustration needs. www.cathleenconcepts.com
April 3, 2025 at 9:56 PM
cafween.bsky.social
Mini Market 🍅 a continuation of my series of paintings inspired by the Borrowers series (which inspired The Secret World of Arrietty)
a Borrower shopping at a tiny market for yellow bell shaped flowers. The shop carries cherry tomatoes, blueberries, lavender, acorns and herbs in antique tins. There are several little bugs hiding around the image and a shopkeeper in the background tying up some thyme
March 26, 2025 at 4:32 PM
cafween.bsky.social
If you see this post a #dragon !

My cover for Seekers of the Wild Realm by Alexandra Ott
March 12, 2025 at 4:10 AM
cafween.bsky.social
I'm now available for work! Would love to help with any of your visual development needs.

Website: CathleenConcepts.com
Email: [email protected]

Navigate to "Client Work" to see my professional portfolio, and email me for the site password.
March 10, 2025 at 5:46 PM
cafween.bsky.social
to this day, this was one of the most rewarding assignments from a client. These were for Darryl Cheng's book "The New Plant Collector." I won't share them all because you should buy the book! It's so helpful if you're struggling with houseplants. More in the alt text!
Darryl gave me some diagrams that explain how to keep a plant looking "presentable" by making cuts to the plant, which I then painted to be "pretty." This one is for a variegated Monstera deliciosa. If you've owned plants, you know they get to that weird leggy phase and you have to figure out how to bring it back to a presentable stage. Which means enduring a bit of an ugly phase! But you may end up with multiple clones which is pretty cool. Growth diagram for an Anthurium crystallinum. It starts off looking beautiful and growing lots of leaves, but then when it gets leggy you might need to make a top cutting. Then you have 2 plants: the top cutting with beautiful old leaves, and an ugly stump. Give it time and that ugly stump will grow beautiful leaves again!
March 5, 2025 at 10:21 PM