iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Cathleen McAllister @cafween.bsky.social · 29/07/2026

Learning to bake 🍞🥖 The kitchen is inspired by the cave homes of Matera, Italy, and my recent experience learning to make sourdough

cozy kitchen where a man is learning to bake bread from a cookbook. A calico cat is overseeing him

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Cathleen McAllister @cafween.bsky.social · 08/07/2026

Had the pleasure of working on all of these book covers last year! Quetzal's Labyrinth by Karla Arenas Valenti, and The Traitor Moth and The Lost Clan by Katharine Orton

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Cathleen McAllister @cafween.bsky.social · 26/05/2026

I've been baking stuff! Focaccia with muffuletta and passionfruit bars. All plant-based 🌱

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Cathleen McAllister @cafween.bsky.social · 26/04/2026

All of these pieces along with a ton of other talented artists are available on the Giant Robot store! Support real artists and get some amazing art ❤️ www.giantrobot.com/collections/...

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Cathleen McAllister @cafween.bsky.social · 24/04/2026

The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002) study in colored pencil. I have been wanting to do Eowyn fanart for a while so this was the perfect opportunity! For FILM SCHOOL: The Return, a gallery show at Giant Robot this Saturday

Colored pencil study of the frame from Lord of the Rings the Two Towers where Eowyn is standing at the top of Rohan overlooking the village below, mountains in the distance

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Cathleen McAllister @cafween.bsky.social · 23/04/2026

Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019) study in colored pencil. One of my favorite movies ever, so beautifully written and touching and sad but so worth watching!

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Cathleen McAllister @cafween.bsky.social · 22/04/2026

Bones and All (2022) study in colored pencil

Colored pencil study of Maren from the movie Bones and All sitting in a field. Pastelly sunrise colors

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Cathleen McAllister @cafween.bsky.social · 21/04/2026

Ophelia (2019) study in colored pencil

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Cathleen McAllister @cafween.bsky.social · 20/04/2026

But I'm a Cheerleader (2000) study in colored pencil for this Saturday's FILM SCHOOL II show at Giant Robot! I love this movie, yes I did watch it for the first time because of MUNA

colored pencil study of a frame from But I'm a Cheerleader, very hot pink and teal

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Cathleen McAllister @cafween.bsky.social · 17/04/2026

excited to be a part of the show FILM SCHOOL II, starting April 25th at Giant Robot in LA! Come by to see some amazingly talented people who have done studies of film stills in traditional media. Here's one I did for Labyrinth in colored pencil

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Cathleen McAllister @cafween.bsky.social · 31/12/2025

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!

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Cathleen McAllister @cafween.bsky.social · 12/12/2025

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

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Cathleen McAllister @cafween.bsky.social · 08/11/2025

if you bought a book last week, it has been shipped! there's still a few left so grab yours before they're gone

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Cathleen McAllister @cafween.bsky.social · 03/11/2025

✨ 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

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Cathleen McAllister @cafween.bsky.social · 07/10/2025

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

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Cathleen McAllister @cafween.bsky.social · 25/09/2025

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.

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Cathleen McAllister @cafween.bsky.social · 21/08/2025

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

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Cathleen McAllister @cafween.bsky.social · 20/08/2025

found a bite mark in the gym equipment today lol

absolutely feral bite mark on the back of the chest supported row machine

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Cathleen McAllister @cafween.bsky.social · 04/08/2025

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

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Cathleen McAllister @cafween.bsky.social · 14/07/2025

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

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Cathleen McAllister @cafween.bsky.social · 26/06/2025

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

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Cathleen McAllister @cafween.bsky.social · 21/05/2025

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

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)

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Cathleen McAllister @cafween.bsky.social · 21/05/2025

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

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Cathleen McAllister @cafween.bsky.social · 03/04/2025

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

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Cathleen McAllister @cafween.bsky.social · 03/04/2025

I'm looking for my next gig! Keep me in mind for all your visual development and illustration needs. www.cathleenconcepts.com

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Cathleen McAllister @cafween.bsky.social · 26/03/2025

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

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Cathleen McAllister @cafween.bsky.social · 12/03/2025

If you see this post a #dragon ! My cover for Seekers of the Wild Realm by Alexandra Ott

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Cathleen McAllister @cafween.bsky.social · 10/03/2025

I'm now available for work! Would love to help with any of your visual development needs. Website: CathleenConcepts.com Email: CathleenMcAllister@gmail.com Navigate to "Client Work" to see my professional portfolio, and email me for the site password.

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Cathleen McAllister @cafween.bsky.social · 05/03/2025

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!

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Cathleen McAllister @cafween.bsky.social · 15/02/2025

Made this little cake for Valentine's Day! Used some fancy cherries my mom got me for my bday and Joanne Lee Molinaro's cake recipe thekoreanvegan.com/steamed-vani...

vegan vanilla sponge cake decorated with whipped cream and amarena cherries. Pepper the cat sits at the counter hoping to steal some whipped cream when I'm not looking

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Cathleen McAllister @cafween.bsky.social · 14/02/2025

painting of the Moorten Botanical Garden in Palm Springs! 🌵 I love this little greenhouse packed with succulents. I painted this with mostly 1 colored-pencil-ish brush as an experiment

A warm greenhouse filled with succulents of all kinds. A man in the background waters one of the plants

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Cathleen McAllister @cafween.bsky.social · 10/02/2025

couple more from the sketchbook, most of these are just pencil but a few are watercolor pencil

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Cathleen McAllister @cafween.bsky.social · 10/02/2025

been enjoying sketching in watercolor pencil with a water brush pen!

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Cathleen McAllister @cafween.bsky.social · 01/02/2025

I don't think I posted Pepito's finished tank, so here it is! He likes sleeping in the little moss cave

bioactive tank for a crested gecko full of plants, leaf litter on the ground, and a backdrop made of branches

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Cathleen McAllister @cafween.bsky.social · 30/01/2025

I put this chair here so he can watch the neighbor's chickens!

a really fluffy grey cat looking out the window. Imagine a worm on a string or an alpaca neck

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Cathleen McAllister @cafween.bsky.social · 02/12/2024

some sketches for an unreleased dystopian sci-fi game. loved the premise, which was an authoritarian alien-run government and how people would find a way to resist. unfortunately the studio shut down, but I had a lot of fun working on this!

a very sterile, cold fast food kiosk where food is sold from a vending machine. it's kind of like an alien 7/11

an underground, human-run bodega, made of makeshift furniture, signage, and provisions

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Cathleen McAllister @cafween.bsky.social · 21/11/2024

I worked on this painting for a demo at Drawbreak in Mexico many years ago, not sure if I ever posted it! This is from a Borrowers-inspired project I was working on #visualdevelopment #art

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Cathleen McAllister @cafween.bsky.social · 18/11/2024

a painting from 2017 ish inspired by the markets of Marrakesh, with a magical twist

a painting of a magic marketplace, inspired by the markets of Marrakesh, set just after sundown. The market is lit with many warm, flowing lanterns. there is a large keyhole archway leading to more market stalls. vendors are selling things like dragon tails, potion ingredients, and lamps

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