Non-trivial ways of teaching speaking and writing. Many language learners will have the difficulty of creating something new in the targeted language. Reading something written out loud, is not as challenging or rewarding as reading your own work. When a language learner starts creating her own work, then she can start feeling productive and confident in the targeted language. There are many different ways of teaching productive skills such as speaking or writing. Natural Skills. First of all, the skills of speaking and writing are more authentic than teaching any grammar subject or reading. It requires motivation more than anything else, because it is real. A teacher can find the motivation for the student as long as the student realizes the sole purpose of speaking a language, which is communicating with others. If the student is planning to move to or work abroad, it comes naturally. The teacher can use various everyday topics to talk about, such as shopping or using transportation. The language with this purpose and concept can be taught by using chunks, such as have a nice day or can you help me? Higher Level of Interest. Also there are many reasons and motives for the student to learn writing. When the topic is given clearly, writing can be a useful way for the student to practice the use of English, because in writing many parts are used in everyday or academic language. Types of Writing. There are two types of writing, writing for academic purposes and writing for fun. Nonetheless when teaching is considered, the approach for both is the same. The student first needs to know how to start writing. If she takes the pen and paper, and begins writing right away after seeing the question or topic, the passage or the essay will collapse in the middle of the practice, because the student might realize that it is not easy to write about that specific topic or the writing is off topic. On the other hand, if the plan and the organization are ready, the only thing left for the writer is to take the pen and begin writing, which in comparison with the prior, is an easy step to take. Teaching Writing. The learning can start with simple sentences in writing. The student might write only one sentence about a topic in the beginning. Then in time, she can try to put the sentence into a paragraph, and the paragraph into an essay if the writing is academic. By doing so the amateur writer does not feel the pressure or fear of writing a long essay, but develop it gradually. If the writing is not an academic one but one for pleasure, the student can begin the process with an easy type of task, such as writing what they did on a specific day. The first time might be difficult, thus the student can choose a day that has many known words or phrases, or even can decide to write only a morning of a specific day. By improving the writing in this way day by day, she can choose more difficult topics in the following days, for example writing a letter to her future or past self. What is speaking? Speaking nevertheless is quite different in nature. It happens instantly at the moment of the conversation. There is no time to get prepared at the beginning, similar to taking the time to prepare for the organization or the vocabulary building when doing the writing. The speaker needs to have prepared herself before the conversation. She is required to have the vocabulary and organizational skills ready. So it takes a while, and the teacher needs to encourage the speaker much more than writing practice. Making mistakes is expected of the student, especially when speaking. On the contrary, the student feels shy and unwilling to take the risk, and begin speaking. Do you want to teach English abroad? Take a TEFL course today. Both of the productive skills require practice and vocabulary building. With the help of the teacher, the student not only gets more confident, but also feels at ease when doing the skills. Thanks so much for watching. We are ITTT the leading provider for TEFL and TESOL training courses. If you like this video, please subscribe by clicking that button down here, and click on any of the videos here on the left for more interesting teaching tips for getting certified to teach English abroad and online.


What's up guys so we're back with another video today with my good buddy Ethan and what are we going to talk about today Ethan? Oh let's talk about um price corrections and volatility in nation markets because that's what cryptocurrency markets are. Nation markets means new kind of innovative they're unfamiliar right? Nation markets have a couple of qualities that make them very volatile. So one they're thin that is there's less liquidity in these markets and say the foreign exchange where trillions of dollars are traded every day on bitcoin's market you might have one or two billion dollars traded every day as an example. So these markets move in very shocky ways. So I see things on social media sometimes where you'll have a news headline that says bitcoin lost 30% of its value in one day and and it's true because comparatively to its high of whatever the past 24 hours may have come down quite a lot. This is something that shocks a lot of people and it shouldn't because these markets are by their very nature extremely volatile. You need to keep that in mind. I think that a lot of people right now what was it uh is it uh what's the company coin coinbase they they added something like 40 000 new accounts in one day. Yeah one day. It would absolutely so so many people rushing into the space naturally I think there are a lot of people who are probably unfamiliar with these markets and then get shocked by the movements.  I think a lot of people may lose a lot of money if they're not aware of what's going on why those price shocks happen and again it's it's down to new markets that are disruptive and they're very thin so they move very quickly. Like actually a good example if you're if you're comparing these markets to traditional cryptocurrency markets you'll find where where I mentioned trillions of dollars are traded every day you'll find that the spread in these markets the difference between the buy price and the sell price are fractions of a penny. In fact on the on the most popular traded currency pair the euro-us dollar the spread is sometimes as low as zero which means the prices actually match each other and they're just waiting for people to pick up the orders. So in those markets you'll see that's that's incredible liquidity lots and lots of liquidity to access for traders. In the crypto markets you will find spreads oftentimes of several dollars between bid and and and ask prices. So again these markets are are thinner than markets that are much more well established they're newer so people are trying to find more and more price discovery as people as more and more people enter the market it becomes more volatile because more and more people then have a vested financial interest in the price direction going one way or another and there are people who have a vested interest in prices going down there's a called short traders. So what I'm trying to explain is that these markets are extremely volatile and if you're seeing price shocks you need to keep your wits about you and understand that this this is this is a logical rational way for this market act just because it's so thin. It's very thin and not to mention there's only certain key players such as central exchanges kind of control the whole inflow and outflow of crypto itself. Yeah we definitely should actually mention manipulation that's going to be to bring up because manipulation is something I think we'd all like to deny oh no these markets are pure and wonderful. Yeah manipulation absolutely occurs and again it's largely because these markets are new but also because these markets are they skirt regulation I think in a lot of cases. So as you get these new markets with a lot of new people who don't necessarily understand what's going on I think those people are easy to take advantage of. If you run a centralized exchange you have opportunity to manipulate prices and even in in regulated environments that might be very tempting to to to decide that hey if I can just hide the behavior I may be able to make an extra million or two that's a very very tempting position for somebody who's running a centralized exchange to be in to manipulate prices to manipulate their customers to manipulate liquidity and price feeds so that behavior it's sometimes hard to prove and oftentimes impossible but I think it's very naive to think it doesn't happen so we need to be aware of that and also this is why decentralized exchanges are more and more compelling is because as you have these centralized administrations these centralized well they're also quite a failure like if you look at back just two weeks ago and they're still ongoing sometimes the DDS attacks sure exactly exchanges can't they're they're manipulated they're they're exposed to attacks they can be brought down right I think this is a problem with Poloniacs is scaling their hardware Poloniacs has these constant problems not to say that Poloniacs is a terrible exchange or anything but they they run into problems just like any other exchange Kraken runs into these problems as well exchanges run into problems where their hardware isn't necessarily meeting the demand of their customer base and also not just about a demand of their customer base but are open to attack people can like you said DDS attack or that's a distributed denial of service attack they can try to bring these exchanges down disrupt the price and if price is actually moving really fast attacking an exchange creates market uncertainty if that exchange has a lot of a lot of market share so there are all these risks of centralized exchanges not necessarily just corruption but also just as a mere set points of failure this is again something we got to keep in mind all of these things add up to a volatile price market even more reason to not keep your crypto on exchange ah there's that too don't keep your crypto on exchanges that's a bad idea use a good wallet I use a cold wallet or use any wallet that has a seed phrase back up and back up your stuff yeah for sure definitely use a wallet that you're going to be able to recover if you say brick your phone or burn your computer down that's right rage of frustration after Bitcoin lost 30% of its value in one day that's that's it be safe be aware keep your wits about you these are volatile nation markets need to keep that in mind I think it's really important that people just understand that awesome well thanks for sharing all right guys if you have any questions for us leave a comment below this video as well make sure you share this video and we'll talk to you soon peace toodles


Zotero is a free, easy-to-use tool to help you collect, organize, cite, and share research. Zotero uses a browser extension to automatically sense research on the web, allowing you to click the extension button and then save it to your Zotero library. The Zotero library helps you organize your research any way you want. You can sort items into collections or folders and tag them with keywords for easy searching. Zotero can also create references and bibliography entries by downloading the Microsoft word extension. You can format your work to match any style guides such as MLA, APA, or Chicago that you would like. This video will walk you through the initial setup steps you need to get started using Zotero. To get started, go to www.zotero.org slash download. When on the download page, we are given two options. One is to download the main Zotero app for Windows or Macs, depending on which computer you're using. I'm on a Mac, so Zotero automatically senses that this is the download option that I should use. For Windows users, you'll see Zotero 5.0 for Windows. The second thing to download is the connector for your browser. It is highly recommended you use Chrome for the best experience with Zotero, Microsoft Word, and our library databases, but you can download an extension for either Safari or Firefox as well. Let's get started with the first step, downloading the Zotero app. Click the blue download button in the box on the left. The download should start automatically at the bottom of your screen. Let the download finish and let it sit down there while we do step number two. Step two is to install the Chrome connector. Go ahead and click on the blue button that says install Chrome connector. This will open up the extension section in the Chrome web store. Click on the blue add to Chrome button. You'll be asked to confirm that this extension can be added to your Chrome. Once the extension is enabled, you will see the Zotero page icon appear in your extensions list in Chrome. Now that we have the app and extension downloaded, it's time for step three, registering or creating an account with Zotero. In the upper right corner, click on the blue register link. Registering for a Zotero allows you to create an account in the cloud so that you can access your Zotero library from anywhere. Enter a username, an email, and password you're likely to remember. This doesn't have to be related to your Gordon account information, but I recommend you use it if it's an easy one for you to remember. Once you've entered in your new registration information, click on the I'm not a robot button and then the blue register link to confirm your registration. Once you've registered, check your email for an email from Zotero. It should look something like this. Click on the link or copy it into your web browser to confirm your email address. Now that we have registered and installed a Chrome connection instead of the download for the app, let's open the downloaded Zotero file that's sitting at the bottom of our web browser. This next process will be slightly different for Mac's first Windows machines. For Windows, follow the steps that appear on the setup wizard and choose the standard setup option. For Mac users, continue watching as we work on installing the app. Once you double click on the Zotero download, a file will appear that allows you to drag the Zotero icon into your applications folder. You can see a message pops up for me that it wants me to either keep both or replace because I already have Zotero on my computer. I'm going to go ahead and click replace. Once I've dragged the Zotero icon to my applications folder, double click on the blue folder to open up applications. You'll see that Zotero should be the first on your list because it's a recent download for today. Double click on Zotero to open up the library. It will ask you to confirm are you sure you really want to open this because it's something from the internet and yes we do. Now when you open up your Zotero library, it will be completely empty. You're likely only going to have this big master's mile library link up at the top in each of these columns. The ones on the left, the one in the middle, and the one on the right will be empty. Now you can actually start creating some of your folders and your collections within your Zotero library that you can start saving resources to. If you'd like to add a new folder to your Zotero library, use the folder icon in the upper left corner of the page. A little box will appear and you can title it whatever you'd like. You can then start saving articles such as this one here which is an example of a Scarley Journal article in one of our library databases academic search complete using the newly installed Chrome extension. Remember that little icon will look like a piece of paper but this icon also changes based on the type of content that you're looking at. Sometimes it might be a piece of paper, other times it might be a book, or maybe even a little video icon if what you're looking at is a YouTube video. To save it to your library go ahead and click on that icon and you'll see that it starts saving to whatever folder you currently have highlighted in your library. In this case it's the newest folder that I just added. And you see if we go back to our Zotero library with that newly added folder here is the information about that article that I just added. As you add new articles to your library you can view a list of all folder contents within the middle viewing pane and if you highlight a particular article over on the far right column you'll get information about that article that you saved and also you can add things like notes to a particular article if you want to make comments to yourself to remember or add specific tags to help you later search for this article within your Zotero library. So we're almost done setting up Zotero but there are a few things that you want to set up under the property section to make sure that your Zotero account is linking across all of your devices. For this step use the menu icon at the very top of your screen. You want to access the preferences section. For Mac users this is located under the Zotero tab and then click on preferences. For Windows users this is possibly under the edit tab and then click on preferences. In the preferences window click on the sync button. Under this section where it says username you should see two blank boxes that will allow you to enter your new username and password for the Zotero account that you just created. Enter that information and then go ahead and click add and you will now be able to sync your account across all of the different devices that you have. The other setting in this preferences window is under the site tab. You can choose your default citation style that you would like each of your resources to be formatted under. You have options such as APA, MLA, Chicago and many more. If you're citing resources under APA click on the American Psychological Association 6th edition. Also notice that underneath the citation option section at the very bottom you're given the option of whether or not you want to include URLs of paper articles and references. I highly recommend that you check off this box because it will include stable URLs to all of your references, journals, magazines, newspapers and more which will make accessing them again so much easier. For Mac users there is no save button so you can just x out of this when it's done. For Windows users you might see an okay button at the bottom of your screen. You're now ready to start saving web content to your Zotero library. I hope you find Zotero to be a powerful tool to help you collect and organize your information. If you have any questions feel free to contact me.


expenses, which are business deductions, were taxed on the net income. Normally, if you're a W-2 employee, you don't have any expenses because the idea is that the employer is paying for the expenses, therefore you just have the W-2 income. The schedule A, on the other hand, is full of a bunch of items that don't correspond to the standard deductions you would think natural to an income tax system if it was just designed to collect money to protect us with the military and whatnot and not to nudge us and manipulate us in all other kinds of way because all the stuff on the itemized deductions on the schedule A or many of them are personal types of deductions which we get to deduct for one reason or another which could add to some complications in terms of what's going to be the qualifying factor that allows us to take the deduction and when the deductions on the schedule A that were personal in nature but now deductible also kind of collide with the natural types of deductions such as business deductions how are we going to deal with basically splitting the capacity to deduct between those two particular areas in a way that we don't basically double dip is the general idea. Now when you hear interest paid


Oh my goodness! Hi! Hi there! Hi! I'm Sandy Claus and this year I get to bring you the gift guide for shopping for artists because I love all the art supplies. They're all so beautiful and they're also full sets and they have all the rainbow of colors and I have to have them all and you know you do too because if you're an artist you need all the stuff. What exactly is going on here? Is that too much eggnog? I don't even like eggnog. Thank you very much. Don't even insult me. I'm just excited about art supplies because I love to talk about them.  I don't know maybe too much candy cane? Why did I love the day that I get my Blick catalog in the mail? It just makes me so happy and I actually got a package from Blick that I ordered because I bought myself a present that I can wrap up and it's pastel pencils and I can't wait to wrap it so I can open it! Oh my goodness! Just chill! I posted a reel on Instagram and it went viral and there's like 250,000 people who have seen it and I had somebody who left a comment and she said, I didn't even know watercolor pencils were a thing. Oh my goodness! How can somebody not know that watercolor pencils exist? I need to talk about that. So the ones that I used in that video were super color and they're by Karen Dash and they're really sweet and really nice and really beautiful. The most expensive would be Paper Castell, their Albrecht Dora line and I just absolutely love them too. They're both beautiful. Intense are beautiful. They're just a little bit on the brighter side, stronger side and they don't melt out quite as nicely but you know they're so good so you should get all of them. No, no, no, no, no, hold on. You don't need all of them. Let's talk for a quick minute about what you might want. Get yourself some quality watercolor pencils. It makes a difference because if you don't have high quality they're not going to melt out and they're going to be weakened color. On the left here is Faber Castell's Albrecht Dora. Second is Super Color by Karen Dash. Third is the High End Karen Dash Pencils Museum Macorrell and then these are not technically watercolor pencils. They're ink tense pencils and they're in ink and I have a whole video on that and what makes them different so if you want to see that I'll put a link in the doobly-doo. So here I'm just using a wet brush wiping the excess water off so that I don't overgoop my trees and then scrub the brush around on it. I'm using a number eight brush here and it's that simple. Just let the colors mix together because fall trees just mush into each other and if your pencils don't melt out, if you don't get to lose those pencil lines the way I'm losing them here, then you need some higher quality pencils. Some of the ink tense don't really melt out all that well, just some certain colors. So then I'm just going to sketch in some tree trunks and some grasses. You can see the color gets more intense as you get to the right. It's because the quality is going up when you get to the Museum Macorrell and the ink tense is only bright because it's ink. And if you're going to get watercolor pencils you also need to get some brushes and I love all the brushes. I get all the brushes. I buy them all because I love them all and I go to the art store and I just can't stop buying them. But if you want some that are really nice and pricy but they're going to last you a really long time then the sable ones are really really nice. The natural hair ones I just love those for painting with. They just do a really good job and then there's synthetic ones that don't do as good a job but they're way more affordable. And the ones that I like that are kind of less expensive are the silver brushes and they're called black velvet. You don't need one of every single size. You can go like a two, a four, a six, an eight, and a 10 and 12. That is simply too much. That's like almost all the sizes but not all of them because I can have control too. You do not need every other number but a non-silver brush that you might want to get is this one and I use it all the time. My Mottler brush for just wetting the paper evenly. If you use a round brush to do that you're just going to get water puddles everywhere. So here I'm using a number eight for the start of the sky but I switched to a number 12. You can see how much quicker you can cover the paper when you have a bigger brush and you don't want to go slow. You need to move quickly and a bigger brush is going to help you do that. A teacher of mine once said use the biggest brush you can get away with. So this one is a number four brush for painting this wet in wet tree and putting a little bit of detail around it while the paper is wet underneath of it gives me a real soft look and in the next pass on top of that once it was dry I painted with the silver brush number four to put detail in the trees and this is my crazy inlaid liner brush that beginners don't need but you know if you're treating yourself to something you might like that brush quite a bit. Save your old toothbrushes to give to your artist friend because they like to use gouache to splatter snow and if you're wondering is there a full tutorial on this painting yes it's over in the winter bookmarks class now as a bonus lesson. Now in the viral video I also used my long point pencil sharpener and I had a lot of questions about that and I had to send a link out to a whole lot of people so let's just show you what the long point pencil sharpener does. There are different long point pencil sharpeners and some people just use a knife that's what I use with my pastel pencils but this afmat is the one that I have for making my long points and when you crank this it feels like the whole pencil is going in and like you're eating up the pencil but it's eating up the wood because it's carving the wood into this long point shape and when you open the bottom part of it there's a piece of sandpaper in there where you can sharpen this thing on the tip because the tip doesn't sharpen sharp sharp inside the sharpener so you need to kind of give that that very very tip a sharp point. I find it easier to just keep a nail file on hand something really simple I can leave on my desk and then I don't have to open the pencil sharpener and get shavings everywhere. Now if you get that pencil sharpener you can sharpen any pencil not just your watercolor pencils to be a nice long point like that it can be your graphite pencils that come in the really soft and the really hard and everything in between so you get a nice range of grays when you're doing sketching or you could actually use them on your colored pencils and maybe some of you didn't know there was colored pencils too yes there are. I have three preferred brands of colored pencils first is Prismacolor and I love them because I've been using them since college but also because they have the most naturalistic color collection and I do mostly natural type of art so I like the desaturated colors. For flowers I often go to Polychromos which are a bit brighter colors they have more brights in their collection and then luminance are just the creamiest most wonderful pencils but they're expensive so I save them for special projects. Now if you're looking for something to get for your colored pencil friend get them some pencil extenders because you can never have enough of these they make a short pencil last longer. If you get yourself pencils of any kind you're going to need something to put them in to hold them sometimes they come in a tin that you can keep but you can also put them into a case like a zipper case and put your pencils in there and you can also instead of using a zipper case you can put them in drawers I got these drawers on top of my desk to make it more easy to access my pencils and that's always a good thing. Just slow down talking to a friend of mine at church and she wanted to get into art and she wanted to start with watercolor and I did not tell her it's a hard one to get started with but that's okay because she'll find out and she asked me to tell her a little bit about the paints in the paper and the brushes that she would need so I started telling her all about the liquid watercolors and the tube watercolors and the pan watercolors and stick watercolors and she wasn't asleep yet so I kept going with the brushes and telling her all about the different kinds of brushes that there are that she could get and then I told her all about the papers and the rough papers and the hot press papers and the cold press papers and the student grade papers and the professional papers and then she was really glazed over so I emailed her a little list of just a few things to get I've learned a lot about watercolor over the years one of which is that I didn't need this first palette that had so many tiny half pans in it I thought I needed all the colors because I didn't really understand mixing but then I switched to a palette that had full pans instead of half pans and now I have even bigger wells in my professional palette I also learned something about brushes and these silver brushes were the ones that I used for a couple years at the beginning and I realized something once I started using the sables and this is expelling all the paint as much as I can out of the brush kind of squishing it to get to the end of the silver brush but when I use a Kalinsky sable the paint comes out of the brush like it wants to I'm not fighting it and it does it slowly so the paper stays wetter all the way down the wash and it doesn't come out as much in my water my water is not dirty whereas with the silver brushes a lot of it stays within that brush and you have to rinse it out and then you lose a lot of pigment let's do a very fast chat on paper and comparison arches is my go-to brand hot presses not my go-to paper it's too smooth cold press is the most popular the rough is the bumpiest and a lot of people don't like it but I love it and I'll show you why and then the student grade I'm throwing in here just for the heck of it it's by kansen it's not by arches and I want to show you the difference between a good and a not good paper so I'm going to use the synthetic brush here on the left and I want to show you something very specific with it as we go just going to let the pigment dry just fill the whole thing with the blue paint and let it dry and see what happens now these two are kind of working fine the hot press is looking a little shaky the cold press just has one little bubble in it but look what happens when we switch to the kalinsky sable brush the paint is coming out of the brush it's like landing on the paper instead of landing in the water when I rinse my brush or go to get more paint and the rough paper also has more of those textured rivulets the mountain and valleys which is moving the color around better so I get smoother blends and when it's all dry I actually get a better result from rough the hot press I can never get a good wash on it I just can't some people do great on this paper but that's just not me cold press I've used for many years and not had very many problems even though I have that little goober there rough has been working great for me and both cold press and rough weren't great with my good brushes the student grade paper though I reserve for using water-based markers and I don't do any big washes with it now if the person you are shopping for likes to go out and do urban sketching or plein air painting let me show you what's in my kit in case this gives you any ideas first off is a chair and this is like an ugly hunting chair okay I'm sorry it's not beautiful however it has a special feature to it it has pockets and I can put things in the pockets I can put snacks in the bottom of the pockets which is awesome put sketchbook in there but then I have a zipper pouch you can get an artist's zipper pouch because we use these for everything and I keep a container for water just make sure it doesn't leak because we can always use those you can get them rags like all of your old rags we can use rags get them a small and I say small like six 12 colors maybe max a very small palette because we don't need to haul out the entire studio when we go outside get them a pencil and a kneaded eraser not just any pencil treat them to a graphwood 9b this is an amazing pencil and it's a little pricier than most but it's so nice and then get them kneaded erasers you can get a whole bunch of them in a little pack and because we use them and we lose them and so that's a really nice cheap thing to get them and then also let's see what else is in here there's a fountain pen and this is a twizby eco pen which is my favorite it comes in extra fine fine and medium I would recommend the fine and then spray bottles little spray bottles bigger spray bottles we are always losing spray bottles when we go out painting and then of course if you're going to have a pencil in there you need a sharpener and this little black wing is tiny and it works really great and then you might also consider just for fun getting them a travel paintbrush and these things are kind of cool because they have a lid that comes off of them and turns into the handle past year I got myself something else that was amazing and I want to share it with you and it's for sketchers I got this sketch easel it is so cool I got it on etsy and I keep my binder clips on the outside and you're just regular office supply store binder clips on the back of it it has this little gizmo and you attach it to the gizmo on the end of your tripod and that way you can make a table out of it basically you can make it high so you can stand at it or low that you can sit and this forms an L that stays in place so you can take your sketchbook and lean it against the backside and your paints and put them on the table surface of one kind or another whatever you're painting or drawing with and that way you have a little workspace out there in public for yourself if you're going to gift a medium of any kind to any artist it's always a good idea to also give them a sketchbook to go with it because that means on Christmas morning they have something to work on right away okay that is something I can wholly endorse so let's talk a little bit about sketchbooks so stillman and burn makes some of the best sketchbooks out there I really love theirs this is the alpha and it works excellent with graphite look at that 9b it's so rich a lot of papers won't handle that and this alpha does a great job I've used pastel pencils in here all different kinds of dry mediums on this paper work nicely he's a little light wash this turkey has just a little bit of watercolor in it you can create a lot of soft blends but you can also use an electric eraser or kneaded eraser to get sharp textures in that just fantastic colored pencils stonehenge hands down this is from the winter wonderland class and I've done a number of classes that are in these sketchbooks on this paper and colored pencils just fantastic in it you can do a little bit of pen and ink work in there but I also discovered something which was kind of interesting that you can use alcohol markers with colored pencil because then you end up with the colored pencil texture on the colored pencil paper so what I did for one of my series of classes the animals infer is doing the whole animal first in alcohol marker and then adding all the detail in the colored pencil so if you're interested in those there will be a link in the big link at the end of this video in the doobly-doo don't go there yet and you can see all of those classes if you wish your artist uses all the mediums then you might like a stillman and burn beta for them it can handle alcohol marker like that that berry but it really does best with wash and ink and that's what I really like it for but you can do some graphite in it I haven't really messed with colored pencil in here but it doesn't have much tooth to it so I don't think colored pencil would be great here but wash and ink works fantastic pencil less so but it's a great sketchbook alcohol marker any quote unquote marker sketchbook in general I find works and the ones that I have are old ones that have been sitting around the studio for a long time but I have tried so many of them over the years so I highly recommend just getting a marker sketchbook it's going to be thinner paper than what you might want like you know some people just don't want it to bleed through but it's going to bleed through that's just the way it's going to go so just get a marker sketchbook this sketchbook is the one that I created the color and line class in so you can learn how to do all those drawings and some pen and ink on top of the drawings in alcohol markers or different kinds of markers or even watercolor in that class for pen and ink my very favorite paper of all time is the lettering paper from Hanamura you know it's weird I think they need to make a sketchbook out of this because I love it the paper doesn't ever feather with your fountain pen I absolutely love that you can get a nice crisp line and the pen just glides over the surface it is beautiful but it all falls out because it's just a pad not a sketchbook but I also use in pen and ink my pentallic sketchbooks a lot this one is what I call my epic sketchbook and it took me a while to go through it some of the pages are falling out because this was my traveling you know going out with my sketch group kind of thing as well as sitting on the sofa thing but it was all epic scenes that were like jumbled full of craziness I did some washes in here so it can handle some washes it's not something I'd say is watercolor friendly but it's definitely watercolor-able along with your pen and ink and pentallic also works excellent for gouache the paper is kind of like Kansan XL I might say it's got that smooth surface but a little bit of bumpiness to it and the gouache just kind of glides over nicely and paints beautifully so I'm going to continue using these pentallic sketchbooks from my gouache going forward because I do love them quite a bit now let's talk watercolor sketchbooks everybody wants one with arches in it and I had Lake Michigan Book Press make me one and you can order any of their sketchbooks in any kind of paper you want so if you're somebody who wants really good paper in your sketchbook have at it she makes a whole bunch and I'm going to get a new sketch a day hopefully in January I'm going to try to make myself finish this one in 2023 that's my goal but I have all kinds of things in here little sketches big epic studies for a bigger piece I did things in here where I was working toward a class if I was going to be painting you know a particular subject I'd paint it five six seven times in here I was working on learning how to paint fire so I just painted fire over and over and over again and then did a video on it and here I was playing around with some travel sketches for the travel sketches class those didn't make it in but they were fun to do in my sketchbook eventually I'm going to do water I have to get to that maybe early next year I'm hoping but these were studies for the galactic watercolor class super fun to be able to have a place to just play in a giant sketchbook now if you want something smaller this white ibis is not bad it's not arches but it's really close it's a Japanese paper I guess but just know this that it's 12 pages and it's like 30 bucks so it might be better off just getting a pad of paper and binding it if you need to have something bound because watercolor paper is expensive this painting that you saw earlier is in the white ibis sketchbook so you can see how nice the edges are in watercolor painting in that now this other one here this Tu Muarta is one that I found because I was looking for something quick and inexpensive for my students in the palswood class so I started playing around with these sketchbooks and I actually got a couple more of them because I take them all over the place with me I leave one in the car leave one all over the place so I always have a sketchbook at hand and it does fairly decent edges with watercolor it's not like super fantastic but it takes pen and ink nicely and it's great for quick little sketches and for a stocking stuffer or something or if you're putting together a watercolor kit for somebody for Christmas this is a great little addition to that there you go watercolor sketchbooks and now let's talk stocking stuffers do not leave these for the last minute because there's some really important ones that you might need a little time to order like the pencil sharpener the afmat pencil sharpener for those nice long points yes this would fit great in a stocking every artist stocking needs favorite castell erasers these are needed erasers they come in colors as well as gray but they are amazing and we keep losing them so get us more you might also consider an electric eraser you've seen my flowers that were done with this eraser but here's how I trim it I keep it pointy by using my scissors to just trim it into a point and then all you have to do is press the button and the battery makes the thing go around and then you can use it almost like a little tiny drill to lift up very small small bits of things you want to erase it also works with colored pencil here I was creating a crunchy snow texture that looked like it was all frosty on a cold morning and it worked just perfect how about a presto jumbo this little sucker covers up anything it even covers up red alcohol marker or paint or ink it is amazing it's like white out in a little squeeze tube you can also get a fountain pen and a bottle of ink that would be tremendous little gift to tuck inside a few fun things you can consider for watercolors might be getting oh little dishes little ceramic dishes sometimes with partitions in them sometimes not we're always mixing stuff up you also get the more spray bottles because you can't ever have enough and I would suggest treating them to one watercolor stick these are like pure pigment you could draw with them you can dip them into water and you can mix them into little dishes you can do all kinds of things with these and they are more cost effective than a tube of paint so get them one and attach to it the name of my video in which I show you a whole bunch of ways you can use a watercolor stick a little treat you could get for a gouache artist I have turned into one of those lately and I would recommend getting them a little palette to use for their gouache getting them all the paints is a little much but if they don't have one of these they're gonna love it there is an underrated art supply that you can get in your local grocery store and it's nice and cheap and it's this this is the business end of my tea strainer and the way you use this is with any kind of pencil you grate the pencil into the top up here and you let the powder fall onto the paper and then you can spread it around with a cotton ball and get very soft textures since I am mostly in control of this video I want to share with you my list of awards that I want to hand out to classes at art-classes.com and I think I have chosen the winners but you might have some thoughts as well and you will have an opportunity to weigh in with your recommendations to nominate for the 12 awards let me read them to you and you can be thinking about them number one aging like fine wine what was the first class at art-classes.com what is the oldest one number two vic courses which ones are the most important to get a good foundation under you number three most likely to succeed as you succeeding which one are you guaranteed to do best in but number four glee award which class just sings number five is the kindness counts award because there might be a little charity involved and then we have the yes I can award in which you become more confident by the end of class how about the de-stressor award which class is just going to wash over you and make you feel relaxed and then there's the in sync award remember the boy band yes well this is a different kind of in sync number nine is the biggest drama queen award which class makes the most dramatic scenes which is related to the art wizardry award where there is magic and then every award list has to have a class clown which one would be the class clown at art-classes.com and last but never least is my hero the caravaggio award the king of light and shadow and you can nominate classes for any of these awards if you wish and i am going to turn this video over to my boring half to explain how that works finally she relinquishes control so we can have a sane conversation if you missed anything during that fire hose do not go back and watch the video again at half speed it doesn't get any better i have put together a list of all of the supplies that were discussed and even some that were not they were cut for time believe it or not and it is all categorized by medium and then there's a little list for stocking stuff or ideas for that medium so shop to your heart's content using the link in the doobly-doo but don't go there yet i'm not done also on that page is information about our sale at art-classes.com and i say our sale because now apparently i'm hooked up with eggnog lady so we are our royal we so our sale is going to be a tiered sale and that means there's different tiers tier one is at $50 and if your card reaches $50 in a total of your classes your printable images and gift cards then you will get a free printable image it's a brand new one coming out on friday i'll show it to you then and you will get that added to your cart at no cost and when you add the value of that which is $10 to the value of the $50 that you just purchased then it's basically like 16 percent off everything then when you get to tier number two that level you're going to get a free class when your cart reaches $100 and it's not just any class it is the brand new class that's coming out on friday and it's called you can to can it's a level two coloring class and it's in color pencil water based markers and alcohol markers and you also get the digital image so that means you're getting $36 worth of free stuff you add that to your hundred dollars then it's like 26 percent off you get to $200 then you also will get a sketch from one of my sketch books in the mail yes i will actually send you physical mail with a good sketch in it i won't put my icky sketches in there i'll give you a good one all right so if you're interested in any of those you might want to fill your cart up now so you're ready to just punch the shop button or the buy button or the cart button or the whatever the button is you know the final button so feel free to fill up your cart in the meantime link in the doobly do it has everything on it including a link to my final page where there's a 20 off sale over there and all just it's all in one spot somebody's going to be a little unhappy that i almost forgot to tell you the awards are also on that page but they're down at the bottom section if you would like to see which classes are nominated for those awards like the in sync award or the de stressor award then please feel free to scroll down there and if you have another nominee to add to the list then click the button and send in your nomination for which class you think deserves which award and there might be something special coming on christmas eve with those things so yeah i'm not going to tell you about it we're just going to have to be a little surprised on christmas okay i told you i had some good ideas i'll see you again in another video very soon in the meantime get out there and create something every day and i'll see you on friday with that new printable i've had so much fun in this video i hope we get to do it again next time i'll see you over on the link in the doobly do go check it right now


I want to welcome you to St. Lucia. As you know, St. Lucia and England have shared historic ties. So I want to welcome you to St. Lucia. I want to tell you we have an accent relationship with your team in St. Lucia. They have done a very good job. I want to thank you also for, I'm sure your High Commissioner here must have told you, we were very concerned about our status as far as travel is concerned.  And in St. Lucia, we are doing our best to mitigate the effects of COVID. I can assure you that the safety of our citizens and the safety of our visitors are key to our survival. Because St. Lucia depends very heavily. In fact, over 50% of our GDP is based on tourism. And we will try our best to secure our citizens and our visitors. So I want to tell you that the government of St. Lucia will do whatever we have to do to ensure that we mitigate the effects of COVID and St. Lucia becomes a country where all be it different, but you can enjoy a general country. We also have very serious initiatives to discuss with you. As you know, I'm sure the Minister for Infrastructure will enlighten you on the work we're doing on our roads. And again, the West Coast of our country, that's where we have the pitons, pitons is a well-herited site. And then we needed to improve that network. That initiative was taken before I was in government. But as I've always said, when even an initiative is started, once it's a good initiative, we shall continue. So we want to continue that work for the employment that it will create and for the infrastructure improvement. So we thank you. I think that initiative was started by Prime Minister Cameron. Yes, that's right. And it took some time, but it started at most things. We also understand the vagaries of the weather and climate change. It's very important to us. Our region can be wiped out, literally wiped out in a few hours with a hurricane.  So climate change is very important to us. We look forward to the interventions in Glasgow. That's where my Ministry of State Development is going to be there. I have not yet decided whether I can travel. But I'm thinking based on the world of good and the importance of that trip, I think I may have to be in Glasgow in 2016. So we look forward to the interventions. We look forward because our islands suffer the most, but we emit the least, which is unfortunate. But this is the right of life, and we hope that we can make some serious interventions at that seminar. So the whole world can benefit from this. Climate change also affects everybody. We have bought this strange weather, like in New York, a hurricane affected the world. In England, you had your share of floods. So climate change affects everyone. So the economic solution will try its best to make our contribution to that. We also have concerns about our debt. Our debt levels are rising, and it has been aggravated by the pandemic. We know that because of our status, we cannot get loans at an affordable rate. Because it's said that we are not at the apokan tree, but we are. But we hope that there can be some. Our partners can help us to graduate so that we can get loans at a better rate than we can because in there, our employment situation is worrisome, particularly among the youth. This is why our government has initiated a youth economy, where we hope to get young people involved in sustainable employment, employment in areas that they enjoy, and we've coined it a youth economy. So I'm sure we'll have some discussions with you on that matter. Generally, we know you've helped us in crime, again, a vexing problem, but only we can solve it by cooperation. So we look forward to our discussions. We look forward to continued cooperation within the country hours, as we look to have a world that the effects of the pandemic will be lessened. We look forward to that day. We know I've been speaking to the Commission about vaccines, because you have available some vaccines for us. We're thinking of how we can use them, but there's still a lot of vaccine hesitancy in our country. But we are trying to persuade people for education that they should be vaccinated, because we believe that vaccinations are the only way now, at least to stem this. So we look forward to our discussions. Welcome to the solution. And we hope to have a very friendly discussion. I'm here really in my role as the adaptation champion for the COP26 presidency. It's a great title. What it really meant was we, as we took on the presidency, the Prime Minister Boris Johnson was very clear that he wanted to make sure that this COP, that we are hosting, rebalanced across the piece all the issues from the Paris agreement, not only the challenges of mitigation and making sure that countries who are major emitters work very hard to reduce those, which is obviously critical, but the other issues, both in terms of finance, as you mentioned, and how finance is allocated and is accessible, and the challenges of adaptation and resilient investments are made so that we look across the whole piece, because it should be looked at holistically, as you say, for St Lucia and for other regional countries. The issue is not the mitigation challenge, but the ability to be resilient to those weather impacts, which are coming even if we manage to solve mitigation tomorrow. We've had those impacts already and they're coming for years to come, so the ability to become more resilient is critical. So that's very much my focus, and it's been, I've had a fascinating visit across the region for the last week, visiting both projects where the UK has been working in country to help develop resilient agriculture, resilient investments, and so on, to understand how that's working in practice and where you, as nations with very, as you say, very urgent challenges are thinking about them, and indeed hearing from all of you where the problems lie, and hopefully I can take those back and really try and drive that through. The one I hear most loudly is the access to finance in order to make those investments, in order to reduce the risks, which is, you know, in a circular sense, clearly the right solution that we want to try and achieve, so that's a very important focus. I think of this COP coming up as the, if Paris was, if the Paris Agreement was signed on the basis of why we're doing it, this is all about how we deliver now. So those tools that need to be put in place, if they're not there, already ought to work better if they don't, so that countries like St Lucia are able to present the case for the sort of, for instance, we were just discussing with you, and this for education schools that are resilient to hurricanes so that you are able to get children back to school after the weather shock has been. So looking across the piece, that's important. I'm really excited to be able to visit the road project yesterday and to get a real sense of, you know, how important it's going to be and how much opportunity it will give, not only to have a resilient road, but the opportunity for economic growth to move to other parts of the island that aren't there now. So I think at so many levels, making sure that access to finance works better because not only does it obviously provide resilient investment, but the opportunity exactly like your road to prove that it helps you as a country to be able to grow your economy more widely. I think on the challenges of COVID, I absolutely hear you and it's great to see the work that you're doing to try and reduce vaccine hesitancy. It's a challenge in a number of countries and trying to, you know, get to grips with the reasons why and they're different in every country, but get to grips with that as well. I was talking to someone yesterday about it and the challenging me on how we'd achieved it and it was a very interesting challenge and actually we did it by our GPs and our doctors and nurses in our communities being the advocates, in fact. So it was where those relationships with our most vulnerable were strongest, where the trust was strongest. It was our doctors and nurses persuading, you know, the most vulnerable to have the vaccine and to come, you know, get beyond that anxiety because it was new that there was, you know, the worry of whether it was okay. But I think that continues to be a challenge that we all want to encourage you to resolve because of course that's one of the reasons, as you say, to our UK solution relationship and our, you know, the tourist trade, which we want to see back up and running as strong as possible for you, one of the criteria for our system, our foreign travel system for UK citizens is obviously the level of vaccination in country which then demonstrates that reduced risk. So that can usually, I know something that the High Commissioner will be, you know, happy to work with you with to make sure that those messages, as you make progress, are fed back into the UK system. But really it's such a pleasure to be here and to have a chance to really hear from all of you about what's important and what you want to see from COP26, the sort of practical outcomes, the roadmap that helps St Lucia to make progress in some of the challenges that the climate shocks, that as I say, we know are coming and are tougher than ever before. How that roadmap from COP26 can be as useful as possible to your administration as you tackle, I know what it's like. I'm the UK Energy Minister in the UK. You know, tackle the day-to-day challenges of making those transformative investments.


I think in a lot of ways. I think one of the biggest ways that it's changed the theatre is helping it to align more closely with the Settlement House, which is our parent organization, and really focusing on how to develop new work for young audiences that are dealing directly with markers of generational poverty. And it's changed our processes, it's changed the way we think about our seasons, and it's changed some of the methodologies of production, so it's been really exciting. And how has the residency changed Carlos' work? I think Carlos up to this point in time has been largely involved in what he just described, more I would say, like vision and operational challenges and being outside eyes that have been incredibly helpful in the transformation of the organization. So, his writing, the piece that we've been building towards is actually going to be moving from this point forward. But there have been opportunities for him to, I think, I think we've asked him on a couple of instances to maybe work really fast, and I think that's probably been something new. I think we've introduced him to a different audience, and I think that's probably challenged his way of thinking about how to approach the work. I'm really excited about what's on the horizon in terms of the writing, so I think the changes have yet to be discovered ultimately.


Dear Anthony, ignore the cameras and take a moment to look around. Trust me. Let's get you in this chair. You're going to read this letter. There's a chair. Okay. Written by Ali. We're surrounded by your beautiful family. One expanded through the fostering and adoption process. This is where the community, the foster family community can come and for free get any of the material needs that they need for a successful placement. We started in 2016 just out of recognizing a need for items and stuff for emergency placements. You are living out your dream to positively impact the lives of thousands of foster children through your organization Foster Family Assistance Network. When we fostered and adopted R2 the only issue we had was getting stuff that was our first few weeks. I would also like to congratulate you on being honored by the Tennessee Titans as a Wesley Mortgage community hero. Your commitment to bettering the lives of children in the foster care system is incredible. Not only do you raise funds to meet basic material needs, but you go above and beyond to help these children feel normal, emotionally support the families and educate the community about the foster care system. Anthony is a giver. He will give you everything. He will give his heart, his soul, his opinion and he's just a fun great guy to be around. You do all of this 24-7-365. So please take one day to reflect on all you have done and go enjoy some Titans football. Along with this they've awarded you 14 Titans tickets. 14 Titans tickets. The community deserves to know about this great organization that Anthony has started and he deserves the acknowledgement.


Okay, so we're standing on the severe fault right now This side over here is Basalt you see the dark black color over here again is the eocene pig member of the clarion formation And it's the red Red rock so right now. I'm gonna show you exactly what was going on here What a normal fault means So let me figure this out Richard, how do you think I should do this this one's deposited in the lake Later the lava flows came out and they were deposited on top and across in various places and then after that The fault broke and this one has dropped down. So now that it's next to it rather than being on top of something like that Just use that This rock right here is 40 million years old. This is from the eocene clarion formation and it's a lake deposit this is what we saw earlier and This right here is a piece of the basalt which is my scene which is 10 million years ago and what this would look like in a In cross-section something like this the clarion some more rocks and then the the basalt was deposited on top of it now on the fault When the fault occurred these rocks would drop down along it like that and now they're sitting right next to the clarion formation which They really didn't have any association before Right now. We're on this basalt here on the basalt side And if you can look in the distance there you can see how this this line of this this fault moves right right along into the distance So again the red rocks on that side and the basalt on that side Richard you why does the basalt have more trees and then the red the soil probably? It will erode faster and it's probably more More minerals than nutrients in it Yeah, then just take it then just take a pan from this


Silicon materials have been developed to repair themselves when damaged, allowing for increased longevity and reliability. These materials are particularly useful in applications such as biomedical devices, optoelectronics, nanotechnology, additive manufacturing, soft robotics, surface protection, and more. This article was authored by Konstantin V. Daryabin, Sofia S. Filipova, and Regina M. Islamova.