Pastel, texture and mood: How Jill Jeffrey builds a landscape

Jill Jeffrey’s landscapes are rarely just a record of a place. They are built from colour, memory, weather, texture and feeling. One of the ways she creates that sense of depth is through her use of pastel and mixed media.

Pastel has a particular quality.

Pastel has a particular quality. It can be soft and atmospheric, but it can also be strong, direct and full of energy. In Jill’s work, it often sits alongside watercolour, ink, pencil, gesso and other materials, allowing each painting to develop its own surface and character.

Rather than using one fixed method, Jill responds to the subject in front of her. Some paintings call for bold colour. Others need a quieter palette, strong drawing, or layers of texture beneath the image. The result is work that feels alive — not over-finished, but full of movement and discovery.

Green - A layered mixed-media landscape looking out from a hill above Rhosson towards Carn Llidi, where pastel and other marks create texture, depth and movement through the fields.

Colour that brings the landscape alive

In Green, Jill uses mixed media to capture the view from a hill above Rhosson towards Carn Llidi in March. The painting has a strong sense of looking out across patchwork fields, with the eye drawn gently through the land and up towards the horizon.

Here, the combination of materials gives the painting both texture and depth. The fields do not feel flat or decorative; they feel layered, handled and worked into. Pastel helps bring certain areas forward, while other marks sit more quietly underneath. This is part of the pleasure of looking at an original painting — the surface reveals itself slowly.

Torridon Sun Pattern shows a much more dramatic side of pastel. Painted in pastel on Saunders 300lb cartridge paper, it is full of brilliant purples, reds and yellows. Jill describes the colours as “all flame colours”, and there is no attempt to make them overly subtle. The painting is about the sudden impact of sunlight on mountain shapes: colour used with confidence, energy and force.

This is where pastel can be especially powerful. It allows colour to be applied directly, with an immediacy that suits a changing landscape. A flash of sun, a sharp ridge, a burning field or a darkening sky can all be suggested with marks that feel fresh and instinctive.

Torridon Sun Pattern - Painted in pastel on Saunders 300lb cartridge paper, Torridon Sun Pattern uses brilliant purples, reds and yellows to capture sudden sunlight across dramatic mountain forms.

Texture beneath the image

Mixed media also allows Jill to build a physical surface before the image fully emerges. In Monolith, painted on a primed board with texture applied using gesso, the surface itself becomes part of the experience of the painting.

The subject was found in a harvest field near the sea at Mevagissey in Cornwall, where Jill was drawn to the hot summer colours. The use of gesso gives the work a tactile quality, so the painting feels rooted in the land rather than simply placed on the surface. The warmth of the harvest field, the solidity of the form and the texture of the board all work together.

That sense of “what lies underneath” is important in Jill’s work. Marks, layers and surface are not hidden away. They help give the painting its atmosphere.

Monolith - Painted on primed board with gesso texture, Monolith draws on the hot summer colours of a harvest field near the sea at Mevagissey, Cornwall.

Drawing, structure and movement

Pastel can also be a drawing tool. In Wind Blown West, which is mainly pastel with mixed media on primed board, the strong, heavily drawn tree shape gives the painting its force.

The work comes from Jill’s study of wind-blown trees in isolated places. That subject needs more than soft colour. It needs structure, direction and tension — the feeling of something shaped by weather over time. Pastel, used with stronger drawing, helps create that sense of movement and resistance.

Wind Blown West - Mainly pastel with mixed media on primed board, Wind Blown West is shaped by the strong drawn form of trees bent and marked by exposed weather.

The same responsiveness can be seen in Brailes Hill, a mixed-media work using watercolour, inks and pastel. This is Jill’s local hill, painted in early autumn colours. Here, the landscape design caught her imagination more than detailed drawing. The greens, rusts and blacks create a strong sense of pattern and structure, showing how Jill often follows the rhythm of the land rather than describing every detail.

Brailes Hill - Using watercolour, inks and pastel, Brailes Hill responds to Jill’s local landscape through greens, rusts and black, focusing on the design and rhythm of the land.

Quiet colour and atmosphere

Not every painting needs to be bold. In Underhill Farm, Jill uses mixed media on Saunders Watercolour Paper, with a muted palette of greys, pinks and dusky rusts. The farm nestles under the shadows of a mountain range in North Wales, and the painting has a quieter, more enclosed feeling.

What brings it to life is the sun on the grass. This kind of contrast is central to Jill’s work: muted colour does not mean a painting lacks energy. A small shift in light can change everything.

This is often what people respond to in her landscapes. It may be a patch of brightness, a dark line, a rough texture, or a sudden colour that makes the whole scene sing.

Underhill Farm - A muted mixed-media landscape of a farm beneath a North Wales mountain range, where greys, pinks and dusky rusts are brought gently to life by sunlight on the grass.

Why mixed media matters

Jill’s use of pastel and mixed media is not about technique for its own sake. It is about finding the right language for each place.

A mountain may need strong colour. A harvest field may need texture. A wind-blown tree may need a firm drawn line. A hillside may need layers of green, rust and black to suggest its shape and rhythm. Each material offers something different, and Jill brings them together to create paintings that feel both considered and instinctive.

For anyone choosing original art, this is part of what makes a painting rewarding to live with. From a distance, you may first notice the mood or the colour. Up close, you begin to see the surface: the pastel marks, the washes, the drawn lines, the texture beneath.

The painting changes as you spend time with it.

And in Jill Jeffrey’s work, that is often where the connection begins — not only with the place she has painted, but with the feeling she has built into the surface itself.