Wildlife, art a natural mix for Tom Allen

Tom Allen has the best of both worlds. The Cape Coral resident has combined his loves of wildlife and art into a rewarding career as a wildlife artist. The portfolio of the 68-year-old wildlife expert, author and educator has evolved from watercolor paintings to acrylic paintings and soapstone and wood carvings.

Wildlife artist Tom Allen holds one of his soapstone carvings, "Hunting Lessons," which depicts a mother bear and cub. Formerly a wildlife research biologist for 32 years in West Virginia, Mr. Allen has plenty of field experience to paint and carve plant and animal life, especially birds of prey, water birds, woodland wildlife and butterflies. "Wildlife has never been a real popular subject to buy," he says, noting that he didn't see a residential presence even when he lived years ago in West Virginia, where two of his painting images decorate automobile license plates. "But that's who I am."

His collection of watercolor and acrylic paintings is substantial, and he has found a market internationally. His commissioned pieces are in prominent, diverse venues. His "Flight for Freedom" painting hangs in the USS West Virginia Trident submarine. His "Snowshoe Hare" painting is at the Snowshoe Mountain Ski Resort in West Virginia.

Clients have included the Rainforest Alliance and Ducks Unlimited. His paintings have been featured in multiple Charlotte Harbor National Estuary Program calendars.

He started painting in watercolor, then switched to acrylic. "Watercolor didn't have the depth," Mr. Allen says. "I wanted to see the contrast, see the color better."

With simple, accurate titles of the subjects they portray, the paintings are anything but simple in the way they were created. "I know what that painting is going to look like before I start it," Mr. Allen says. "I see the image in my mind. The satisfaction is seeing it materialize as I go. I like it to look like a photograph."

Sometimes Mr. Allen looks at photographs to paint subjects, but many times he uses actual subjects, which means he visits zoos and other locations to see the animals. "Generally I love to paint from the animal," he says. "I get better details."

For his 16-inch by 20-inch acrylic on treated masonite, "Ocelot in Rainforest," he says he twice went to Brazil during different seasons to photograph and study the animal and plant life there. For "Eastern Box Turtle," he used a box turtle shell, which he has in his personal collection at his home, to reproduce the markings

His stone carvings, too, reflect attention to detail. "I'm hooked on carving," he says, adding that bears and birds are his favorites to carve. He created an arctic series that includes polar bears, musk ox, walrus and seal.

He's often got an eye out for soapstone, which he has collected from Ontario, Alaska and Vermont. He's carved some pieces from Brazilian soapstone he purchased in Vermont. "What you look for is uniformity. You don't want a lot of cracks from it," he says, noting that the soapstone comes with some cracks.

Mr. Allen has white, green, blue and pink stone. The color usually determines what type of carving he'll make. He says he has about a 40-pound piece of white stone that will probably become polar bears. A blue stone of about the same size may become a grizzly bear standing up with a fish in its mouth.

He uses basswood to create

his wood carvings, also

of subjects he knows well. For the past several years, Mr. Allen has researched the burrowing owls in Cape Coral, and among the assorted birds he has carved is a pair of burrowing owls in a basswood and copper piece.