I’ve been making a few paintings in the last year or so depicting some of my boys’ most treasured toys. This is the latest one, which I completed this week. It depicts a six and a bit centimetre Bluey toy, from the Australian animated childrens (and adults really) programme of the same name. I don’t…
Author: simonbirtall
I am an artist and art tutor based in Merseyside, UK. I paint in an Impressionist-influenced technique in oils or acrylics on canvas and make drawings in pencil, pen, pastels and more.
Leaves Under a Swing
I was pushing my youngest son on a ‘birds nest’ swing in the local playground one sunny autumn morning in 2022 when I distractedly noticed the fallen leaves lying beneath the swing. The strength of the colour I saw, and in particular the contrast between the autumnal colours in the leaves and the rich, sunlit…
Happy Meal Paddington
This painting was made as a live demonstration piece for my art class in Hoylake earlier today. It was painted in water-mixable oils on A4 Winsor & Newton canvas-textured oil paper. It took me something like an hour to paint.I don’t like the colour of the shadow in the background, but there isn’t always time…
They fell from trees!
Pictured is a demo painting made today for an upcoming art class. A still life painting in acrylics on A4 mixed media paper, it depicts an acorn, an empty cupule, and a conker. The class challenge will be to produce a similar still life painting including anything that has fallen from a tree. As we…
My Lockdown Walk
The subject for one of my most recent online art classes was inspired by instructions to stay local during Lockdowns I-III, and the regular walks that many of us consequently developed. I thought it might be a nice idea if my students and I each put together a pictorial representation of our respective ‘lockdown walk’….
Drawing Upon Life 