In my second interview in this series, I had a right good natter with English watercolour artist and teacher Victoria (Vicky) Jeffery, also known as “Crobbles Watercolour”.

Shelley Skail: Hello! Lovely to speak with you and thanks for making the time to chat with me. First off, I have to ask – where does “Crobbles” come from?

Vicky Jeffery: My maiden name is Crosby (ooh that seems so old fashioned!) and back in the mists of time, when I was a primary school teacher, I was working with little ones. To my surprise they had trouble remembering and or pronouncing “Crosby”. I was called Miss Crobsley, Crossberry, Crobsey, Cobsey, all sorts of variations on my name! When I told Laurie [my husband] about this, he thought it was such fun and promptly nicknamed me Crobbles. It stuck. It’s often shortened to “Crobs”. Even my best friend thinks of me as Crobs and calls Perran [my daughter] “Crobs Junior”. Sometimes it’s changed to Scribbles. So, I’m Crobbles, that’s me!

Ah! I had always wondered that (laughing). Okay, next up – and I wonder if you get asked this a lot – where do you get your ideas from?

I haven’t been asked it for a long time, until recently during my exhibition. A lot of the people I met at the exhibition wanted to know why I’d painted what I painted.

I get a lot of my ideas from interacting with other artists. I’m often inspired by what I see other people doing and it sparks me off in a particular direction. I’m also inspired by the world about me – nature, animals, plants, and things, and how they change throughout the year.

I recently found some tulips that were blown; they hadn’t lost the petals completely and they hadn’t lost the colour either but they were definitely on their way out and they were just so beautiful. I was really inspired by those – I was all like “I gotta take some pictures and paint these!“.

Stories and music, definitely. I love a good myth or folklore and sometimes songs have lyrics to them that will set me off in a direction thinking “how would I illustrate that? How would I paint that? What does that person look like?”

But I think the most the biggest one will be from other artists and seeing what other people do – being engaged in that, in the stories and the choices that they make.

Well, that leads me quite nicely on because I was going to ask, who are your top three artists?

This is hard! I’ve come up with some names straight away but it’s definitely not three!

(Laughing) That’s okay, give me a list.

Okay, I’ve got it down to two contemporary artists – people who are alive and working now who I find really, really inspiring. And then there is some historical stuff – I thought I could loop those into a into a group.

Okay!

So my first one is Stephanie Law, the fantasy artist.

I’ve got a really old – I think it’s probably from the early 80s – compilation book of artwork from fantasy artists. It’s all fairies and magic and things. Some of her very first published work is in that. And when you compare it to what she’s producing now, it’s wonderful to see because her work was brilliant. But to see what she’s producing now, with 20 years experience of continually painting and exploring very similar ideas, it’s really inspiring. It makes me think, “I can do that if I keep sticking at it and if I keep doing what I’m doing look where I could be!”

I love her composition. She has a really natural flow with composition, you’re just drawn into her paintings. There’s so many layers and so much depth and there’s the soft colour palettes as well. She really has an overall skill with all those things. The composition is right, the colour palettes are right, the attention to detail is right. There’s storytelling and I love it. Absolutely love it. Very, very inspiring.

Her stuff is amazing. I’ve got a couple of her books. They’re just… WOW.

Yes. I have a couple too! And there’s one I’d like, it’s really hard to get a hold of them and it’s the Mythological Animals one. I keep looking online every now and again to see if somebody’s selling it somewhere. But whenever it pops up, it’s silly money because it’s out of print and people have sussed out it’s a good one!

Next is a lady I came across about three years ago. She’s a Brazilian artist and she’s called Stephanie Boechat. She’s a figurative artist and her portraiture and her figure studies are to die for!

Her work is just ‘Oh!‘ There’s only one piece that I find difficult and it’s because the subject matter (it’s clown and I don’t like clowns) but apart from that I haven’t come across a piece of her work that I haven’t wanted to just sit and look at.

She did an exhibition – that was how I came across her, actually. She did an exhibition about three years ago which was all female figures and it was about ‘Woman’. They were all women of every colour and every shape and size and age – there were some really elderly women.

There were some amazingly rounded forms. There were truncated figure studies, you know so there wasn’t a head or whatever just these beautiful torsos. She has a real skill with lost edges and fine details. So, within her work, you’ll get the really loose marks – say you’ve got a guy with afro-textured hair, his hair will be really loose and just disappear into the paper and yet his facial features, his eyes, will be right there, absolutely right there!

I love everything about her work. I wish I could speak Portuguese! She does lessons and classes. I’ve tried to follow a few that she did free online, and yes, you can manage to a certain extent, but you miss a lot too.

I would love to be able to go to a couple of her classes and spend some time with her. Her work is absolutely amazing. Very, very inspiring. And she’s really passionate too, she loves teaching. You can tell she has a wonderful rapport when she’s working with people. So that’s good too.

So that’s my two contemporary artists, and now it’s all the oldies; Arthur Rackham, Edmund Dulac, and Kay Nielsen, all that era of the finest story illustrations, and the most beautifully executed paintings, pen and ink and wash, highly decorative things like Kay Nielson, it’s almost art deco / art nouveau style, same with Edmund Dulac.

I love all that, I’m very, very inspired by that. And there’s all the storytelling that goes with them. The old folk tales and things, Arabian Nights – I love absolutely everything about them. I’ve got a couple of really old books that are proper treasures with their work in and they’re something you can just look back at again and again.

And then there’s lots of people now doing very similar things – you being one of them – Jackie Morris who did Lost Words. You can tell she’s inspired by the same sort of things. And she has a lovely modern take on it.

I’m a big fan of Rackham, love his stuff too. So, speaking of favourites, what’s a favourite piece of your own art?

I find that really difficult. I don’t [have one].

I have an interesting relationship with my paintings. If I had to pick one of my recent works, I could say, it would be the squirrel from the calendar – Mr Squiggles.

He was the culmination of that whole period of really intense painting for the [2022] calendar and he was one of the last things I did. And he was actually an extra one rather than specifically for the calendar that I made for the exhibition. I was really nervous about it because of the fluffy tail and capturing that life, the animation within the creature itself. And he just came together! I was super pleased he was so popular as well.

But when I’ve done a painting I need time with it to process what I’ve learned, what I did, how I feel about it. But it’s not that long and then I’ve moved on and I’m not interested. Laurie finds that difficult because I would quite happily sling things out, literally rip them up and sling them out, or paint on the back, or whatever. And he says, “oh no, you need to keep them!” but I’m like “eugh, no!”

I’m highly critical of old paintings. But having said that I do have some that are incredibly old – I have paintings that are from when I was a teenager – 13, 14 – and half of me thinks they’re absolutely hysterical and the other half of me is very fond of them because they show my journey. I was really brave back then. I didn’t fuss about getting the perspective right or worry about the details. I just had an idea so I painted it! And it is that sort of freshness about them that I would quite like to capture again, but I don’t know if I could actually let go enough to do that now with all the experience that I have.

So I don’t really have a favourite painting – Mr Squiggles is probably the nearest you’ll get.

I LOVE that you’ve called him ‘Mr Squiggles’! I love that squirrel and I think I understand why it’s so popular as well, because you did capture life, it’s fluffiness and it’s a really, really lovely piece of work.

Thank you.

Is there anything that you’re working on at the moment that you want to tell people about – a current labour of love, or a project?

Yes definitely! I’m being slightly distracted by something I can’t be distracted by at the moment. In typical artist fashion I have a bit of a butterfly brain when it comes to my painting. I’m contemplating next year’s [2023] calendar.

Now I’m working on my next class for Skillshare – but the distraction of wanting to gear up towards painting more of my calendar. Last year we left it a little bit late with starting, so this year we decided that hopefully August will be my really intense month for painting the calendar hence I’m starting to think about it. I have toyed with doing technically quite difficult paintings with things like seed heads and new growth like the fiddle heads of ferns – but doing them really big and really macro – a conker still in it’s kernel and all the little, wonderful wood grain spirals that you get and the shininess of the conker – things like that.

And yes, I’m really into that and I like the idea of the technical challenge of producing something like that, but the one that’s singing to me at the moment is Gateways and Doorways…

I’m gathering inspiration at the moment and I’m thinking that it will be slightly seasonal in it’s palette and it’s look so, for example, September and October will have autumnal themed colours to them and the winter ones will be colder in their aspect, but it will be staircases, gates, doors, bridges, alleyways, anything leading somewhere and telling its own story.

I was going to say – there’s a narrative aspect to that.

That’s what’s really appealing to me! So if you go through that arch, what is going to happen? Or if you open that door, what is on the other side? Or who put that door there? Why is there a fairy door at the bottom of that tree? I really want to capture that so that rather than having a picture that’s up for the month and initially somebody sees it and thinks “oh yes it’s a squirrel. That’s a really nice squirrel , I’ll call him Mr Squiggles.” And by the end of the month its forgotten. But if perhaps I can have a picture that’s got more narrative to it, they might come back to it more and see it more and reflect on it more. That’s my hope. It’s a very challenging thing but in a different way to the seed heads.

I don’t think either of them will go away – I think I will pursue both of them at some point. But the doors and the leading to something is singing to me at the moment.

That’s exciting!

We would also like to invest in a fine art printer so that we can actually do a limited edition version of the calendar where it will be like buying 12 fine art prints. And each limited edition calendar will be hand made and unique in that each one will be slightly differently hand embellished.

We, obviously, won’t do very many of those and they have to be pre-order because there’s a huge amount of work involved in that. But I like the thought of it – I know some people have previously bought the calendars because they like the pictures and they wanted to keep them. One of my friends initially bought a calendar because there was an owl painting in it and her Mum loves owls. She was going to frame the owl for her Mum. And I said “you can’t do that, it’s terrible quality!” and she said “no, no, no, Mum won’t mind!“, so I ended up sending her the original anyway.

Oh wow!

We go back a long way, her Mum was a very dear soul to me when I was a teenager so it felt like a really good thing to do.

The thought that if somebody really does like the paintings within the calendar that they can actually have them as a keepsake – a proper print – that really appeals to me because it gives that body of work longevity. It’s not just something that’s on the wall with some dates on the bottom and then it’s recycled at the end of the year. It’s actually got a lifespan of it’s own. It’s something to keep – it’s a keepsake. It’s what I would hope.

Can you tell me about a typical day in your life?

Well a typical day these days – post pandemic – is a lot more relaxed than it ever used to be. We’re all early risers so up and about definitely before 7am. But I generally take it easy – catch up with the news and friends and I usually do a bit of German – I’ve been learning German. I did French for a little while but decided I wasn’t getting very far with that so I’ve been learning German on my own for about 8/9 months now and I’m thoroughly enjoying it. That’s one of my little routines – gets the old grey cells active first thing in the morning!

Can’t start the day without a bucket full of some sort of coffee which gets me on my way. If we can, we like to have breakfast together. It’s just one of our little things, it’s a nice way to start the day.

Is that all three of you [Vicky, husband Laurie, and daughter Perran]?

Yeah, if we can. More often than not we will have breakfast at the table together because we can. And then depending on what’s what, I’ll be painting or there’ll be some admin to do if/when Laurie’s working. Most of the time I’m painting, I’m sorting out cats, I’m doing stuff around the house.

Almost every day Perran and I will have a walk. And that’s locally. We’re really lucky – you fall out of the front door and you’ve got the park. Often on our walks Perran will use me as a sounding board for her writing and I do the same with my thoughts and plans for a painting, and that’s really nice. We never push it, it’s always definitely a stroll taking things in as we go around.

If it’s a day when I’m painting I’m very strict with myself in that once we’ve done get-up morning stuff I’m in here [the studio] and I will paint until I need a break or something needs to sit and dry properly and what have you. And then I’ll run around and do things like chores and come back to it and that way it is giving my brain a complete break from what I’m doing and then it’s back at it.

Because we’re all at home and we can, we have dinner together. Laurie is mostly the cook but occasionally Perran and I muck in. And then we take it easy in the evenings, listening to stories, watching films. In the winter we have the fire lit and cats to cuddle, pottering around really. That’s it.

It never used to be like that, I suppose you could say Laurie is semi-retired at the moment because of what happened with his [photography & videography] business due to the pandemic. We can take it at our own pace so I’m very grateful for that.

Sounds quite idyllic, especially considering because you literally live in a cottage [laughing].

So can you finish this – if you really knew me you’d know that…

[Laughing] I can knit socks.

That’s quite impressive!

And there is nothing like wearing a pair of hand made socks. It’s the most luxurious things, they’re really brilliant. I think I’ve knitted, at minimum, maybe 100 pairs of socks.

Wow!

Also, I love dancing – I dance all the time if I can. One of the best ways of making doing the dishes more enjoyable is putting some bouncy music on and dancing while I do the dishes. So I dance – I did ballet and jazz right up until my late teens, and, like you, I’ve done bellydancing and all sort of other things. I don’t have the opportunity to go anywhere particularly to dance, but I would probably jump at the chance now. But I dance around the cottage all the time.

Oh I love that! I think they’re both fabulous bits of information. And I’m so impressed with your sock knitting. At a push I could maybe knit a scarf!

Well if you can knit in a straight line you can knit in the round – you could make a sock, they’re not as complicated as they look. I used to do it on long drives.

Not while driving I hope [laughing]

[Laughing] it’s fine, you can drive with your toes

Or get a self driving car

I’ve got one of those, it’s called the Laurie-2000 [Laughs]

[Laughs] Well this leads me neatly on to… tell me your favourite joke

Why doesn’t The Queen wave with this hand [points to her left hand]

Oh, I don’t know, why does The Queen not wave with that hand?

Because it’s mine

[Laughing] I like that!

[Laughing] I’m not very good at remembering jokes, but I love word play and puns and all that.

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Vicky has a lovely Etsy shop where she sells original watercolour paintings, gift cards and prints. You can see full length process videos on her YouTube channel, and you can keep up to date with her daily art life on Instagram.

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And if you enjoyed this, have a read of my other artist interviews with

• Elise Aabakken
• Françoise Blayac
• Simone Michiels
• Taylor Carroll
• Jen Dixon