How do I display custom post type thumbnails in my theme?

I have created an “authors” custom post type and entered several posts with post thumbnails. On my homepage, I am currently displaying a list of all of the titles from that custom post type. I would like to do a separate query and display thumbnails from authors of the “featured” category. I am not sure what I need to do to have the two queries on the same page, and to display just the post thumbnails from a specific category within a custom post type.

I’m sure I’m just overthinking this, but I’d love to hear how this is possible. Thanks in advance for your help!