About Caitlin

I am a scientific illustrator with a background in the biological sciences and a lifelong love of the natural world. My curiosity and fascination with animals were encouraged from the start by my marine biologist parents, and I grew up exploring the wild forests and rugged coasts of the Pacific Northwest. I devoted many years of my life to working with animals and studying animal behavior, taxonomy and phylogeny, conservation biology, and environmental science. I have a bachelor's degree in biology from the University of Puget Sound (Tacoma, WA) and a master's in zoology from James Cook University (Townsville, QLD, Australia). I have also completed the Natural Science Illustration certificate program at the University of Washington. Currently based near Seattle, my mission is to create lifelike illustrations that convey a high level of biological detail. I have a fascination with underappreciated species, and I am particularly enthralled by fishes and other aquatic organisms. The delicate, intricate anatomy of a fin ray or the perfect arrangement of guanine crystals that creates the iridescence in a fish scale can hold my attention for hours. While any sufficiently advanced biology may seem indistinguishable from magic (to paraphrase Arthur C. Clarke), a good scientific illustration can make this magic available to anyone. My goal with my illustration work is to reveal things you might never otherwise see.