My Artwork

My Artwork

By Dan L. Hollifield

Updated: 12/22/2003


  1. This first oil painting was done on 4 sheets of posterboard duct taped together into one large surface. The differently colored cylinders represent huge beams of laser light. Each color responding to a musical note, the beams are the visible part of a deep-space concert broadcast. The copper sphere with yellow windows is a passing spaceship. It's mirrored surface reflecting the lasers as well as the nearer stars. From the reflection, one can tell the relative position and size of the spacecraft. I actually used a chrome ball and different lengths of broomhandle to position the reflections correctly for the drawing for this painting. I drew and painted this one Rebuild when I took a voluntary layoff and used up all four weeks of my vacation time for the year to make one very long vacation. I did a lot of painting that summer.


  2. Another oil painting on posterboard from that same summer vacation. This one is on a single sheet of posterboard. It was inspired by a very vivid nightmare of watching a giant octopus grab and sink a sailing ship. I haven't the faintest idea why there aren't any sailors jumping off of the ship, unless they are all in the lifeboat with me. It looks somewhat like an animation cell.














  3. Earth, the moon, the sun, and several space stations. Oil painting on posterboard. One of my very first efforts.



















  4. "Land of the Giants" inspired this watercolor painting when I was in high school.



















  5. An original sketch of a cargo spacecraft. Pen and ink. The original drawing was half the size of this scanned copy. You can see the strong Star Treck influence in the tubular warp engines. I'm a first generation Trekkie. I have no shame. I liked this design so much, I used the colorized version in my story "Saucerful of Secrets" as the visiting alien's ship.

  6. The same image, but here I used the computer as a box of crayons to color in the image and background. This is the image I used for the webpage of the story

  7. Oil painting on canvas. Sailing ship at dawn. I painted this one as a Christmas present for a friend. He wants me to add leaping dolphins one of these days.

  8. Oil painting on 2X3 foot canvas. "Elvis on a Stairway to Heaven" is what the fellow who hired me to paint it wanted. "Final Encore" is what I call it. This took several months to draw and paint. I was worried that I didn't get the flesh tones exactly right, but everything seemed to work. The faces of the audence members were all done in silloutte, I decided that having each stair float was a better visual than a long staircase. Elvis' shadow gave me fits trying to get it right and show him hovering at the correct height. The rays of light coming from the gates of Heaven also have glow-in-the-dark paint mixed in for an etherial effect.



















  9. Close up of the centerpiece of the fabric painting on the back of my first motorcycle jacket.


























  10. Detail from the fabric painting on the back of my first motorcycle jacket.























  11. The jacket painting as a whole.






















  12. I was hired to paint this one of Hendrix by someone at work. Unfortunately, before I finished the painting and got paid, he went to jail for murder. I've been holding onto it ever since in case he gets out and wants it! I've turned down several cash offers to buy the painting.













  13. Map detail for the first third of the story "Threat of Valleor" with most of the major placenames added.

  14. Oil painting on two pieces of posterboard. This is from a dream I had about watching ships take off from a base on a small moon. The painting was designed to be one frame of an animated movie.

  15. Close-up detail of the Xerox copy of my color map of Bethdish for my stories. Shows several spaceship designs, their landing field, and many small cities near the spaceport.

  16. A frient bought a hearse to use for a Halloween promotion for his video rental store. He hired me to paint various Halloween, monster, and horror movie images all over the hearse. One of my favorites was this mummy using a telephone. It was next to the store's phone number.



















  17. Another of my favorites from the hearse was this witch on a broomstick, flying across the face of the moon. This is drawn correctly according to folklore.



















  18. Another Star Trek-themed painting. This one was done as a class project for a college art class. the painting is done entirely in dots, which was my choice. I was doing a lot of pointalism at that time. The project was to show a believable 3-D effect by using dark-to-light-to-dark color shading. The small green planet in the upper left of the painting earned me an A for the assignment.

  19. Close up of the 3-D shading of the planet that earned my A.









  20. A fighter I drew for a story illustration.














  21. The cover for my first novel attempt: "The Threat of Valleor" showing the final climactic battle against the evil one.














  22. A colored pencil drawing that I did at work on break one night. The forground has been pasted onto an astronomy photo for a real starfield background. This is for the story "Grudge Match".



  23. Illustration for "Abducted!"



















  24. Another illustration for "Abducted!" showing the starship Murder Weapon in orbit around Bethdish.