Please tactfully criticise my surrealism.

There is indeed a link between painting models - eg toy soldiers, or better still realistic replicas - and painting in general.  You have to mix the colours, know how to apply them so that they don't immediately flake off, ensure that your brush strokes don't overlap and put colour where it shouldn't be.   I'd certainly call that art work. I have never really got surrealism as a concept - bits of it I like, bits of it I don't: the above images don't particularly speak my language, but are accomplished.  Still - I do like your boat. 

Donkey's years ago - i.e., at least 60, I had toy soldiers, cowboys and Injuns, knights, Robin Hood figures, and painted them myself - great fun, and I'm sure that's where my love of painting started.  If only they still made those models today, I'd still be doing it, and buying model castles to put them in...... oh dear: I do miss them! Don't think it's quite the same for kids today, and suspect that's their loss.  

That's reminded me that many moons ago I had a brief flirt with painting war games soldiers (Napoleonic era figures).  Tiny, but detailed figures, I must have painted quite a few...we played mini war games.  I still have some.  But it was the larger painted figures that got my attention having seen quite a few at craft fairs etc over the years.  Beautifully painted. Back on the surreal thing, here's another artist who fits the bill for surrealism....ie, painting the unreal realisticly.  Not one of the big guns, but popular.  Rob Gonsalves.  I like his playfulness with perspective.  Everyone else calls him a surrealist, but he thought of himself as a 'magic realist', because his paintings were carefully planned and that, apparently, is not surrealism.  ????  No wonder I get confused.   If you don't know him, he's worth a look.  Here's a couple....