Halfway down

I walked up the hill at teatime. I'm trying to challenge myself to walk uphill at a brisk pace without stopping every half minute to try framing a photo, as I really need some useful exercise, as well as the sense of wellbeing I gain from dawdling very slowly and playing with my camera. I didn't get quite as far up as I hoped before I was too breathless to continue without a pause, but it was a start and I'll try to improve on it.

This meant that I took photos on the way back down. It was very windy, not good for close-up work, and the butterflies were not settling for long enough for me to focus on them. This is the view across the valley from about halfway. The light was very grey with intermittent light rain falling, but I love the patchwork of fields and hedgerows and the skyline trees. 

I spend most of the morning with J, as her PA was delayed by a car problem. This week we have started to learn to use Krita, which is digital art and animation software. J is keen to see how far she can control it independently with her switch to animate more independently, as although she loves stop motion, she always needs someone's hands to move the pieces for her. For the moment, we are concentrating on familiarising ourselves with the drawing and painting tools, and after a little initial overwhelm I'm finding it quite addictive and have downloaded it on my laptop to play with, as well as using it with J on her computer. Having experimented with various brushes and effects over the past few days, we decided to try the vector based options. J can't "draw" with her switch, which only scans in straight lines, but she was excited to find she could make and resize shapes and choose the colours and paint styles; she quickly started envisaging abstract animation sequences, though we have a lot to learn before we reach that point. It feels good for us both to be learning and enjoying something new.