My name is Petty Officer Leo Cios. I've been in the Coast Guard for just over 10 years now and I am a company commander in the Coast Guard. What made me want to be a company commander is that you roll an example that my company commanders had set. When I came through recruit training, the professionalism and above reproach that my company commanders had made me want to strive to set that example for the next generation of Coast Guard's men and women. I manage my work life and home life by just doing a lot of physical activities, running, jujitsu, just being outdoors. Me and another company commander, we just did ultramarathon, and that was eye-opening to how hard it was. I would do another one in a heartbeat. It was hard, but when you finish, there's nothing quite like completing something that not a lot of people can. I got into jujitsu because I listened to a lot of jacquo willing. It talks about it a lot, so I figured I'd give it a try. And it's been fun ever since. Jujitsu has helped me as a company commander to the humility that it imparts on you that you really don't know much of anything once you show up. And then you slowly gain more skills. And that's the same way as coming here as a company commander. My favorite thing about being a company commander is watching the change of these young adults coming through work or training from civilians. And on graduation day, the pride that they have and the accomplishment that they show, really, that's one of the best things that I've experienced in my Coast Guard career is watching them grow as people.


Hi, everyone. I'm really honored to be back here again. Kiltr has been fantastic for my growth as well and my learning as well. I don't ever think that we stop learning, but it's very, very important to learn from the right teachers. And it's very important to have critical thinking as well. Yogita and I actually met because both of us were clones for Daily Dump, which is a composting company and which keeps tons and tons of organic or wet waste off the streets of Bangalore right now. And we actually propagated it in our own cities when I was in Hazarbha. Then Yogita was in Goa. She's still in Goa. So let's get started. The reason why I thought of this talk is because of this. This is Brian. He's my operations manager and his wife is pregnant. She's due in October, actually. And we were discussing nutritional supplements for his wife, Apeksha. And he said, yeah, I'm buying this women's special Horlicks and I'm like, okay, that's interesting. Why are you buying it? And you know, when you're already getting ragi malt from the farm and he's like, yeah, because you know, it has the necessary vitamins and minerals and the person at the hospital recommended it. And I'm like, okay, let's take a look at the label. And he took a look at the label and what we found was I do have a jar of it right here. I actually got it from him specifically. So this is Brian and Apeksha's jar of Horlicks over here. And the first ingredient is cereal extract 47%, which means there's barley flour, not even barley malt. Barley flour, wheat flour, malted barley, which is about 8% and malted wheat, which is about 1%. So when he took a look at this, he was just like, and then you know, there's 36% milk solids and then there's hydrolyzed corn solids, minerals, salt and vitamins. So essentially it's Ata and a vitamin tablet. If you want to like simplify it further. And when we broke down the cost because we're a food manufacturing company, we do understand that there are associated costs with manufacturing food, which is why the industry standard is that your basic input cost, which is just your raw materials or your raw ingredients should be approximately between 30 to 40% of the total cost, which is your MRP. So if you're selling something for about 100 rupees, just the raw material or the raw ingredients without the labor, without the processing cost about 30 rupees or so, the labor, the rent, the machines, the utilities, all of them, and then your profit margin, all of them make up the rest of the 70%. This is his face when we calculated the price on the retail prices that are available in the market online. We just went to Amazon and we checked out everything. And this is just, and then he looked at me and he's like, you know what, the ragi malt and the jawar malt and the barley malt that she gets from her farms back home is just so much better than this. And there's no sugar in it. So yeah, let's get started. This is the anatomy of a food package. Now a food package has two basic parts to it. One is called the PDP, which is the principal display panel. And one is called the IPR information panel. Now the information panel comprises of the nutrition facts, which is your nutrition table as well as the ingredients. And then you have your regulatory information, which is where it's manufactured, what is the batch size or batch number and you know, the FSSAI or whatever licensing it needs to, it requires and whatever GMP code it needs, which is good manufacturing practices code. The PDP on the other hand is a free for all. It's not really well regulated in India or at least across the world. Globally, you have some amount of leeway because it's considered as creative and you can basically just display anything that you want on it, which allows, but that has the majority of the real estate. If you can see the box over here, the majority of the real estate is given to advertising and claims that can be explained away with a little asterisk or a little hashtag or a little arrow. I've just, I've encountered so many little superscripts of a variety of symbols and numbers. It's mind boggling. If you have your hands on a milk supplement like a Horlicks bottle, bring it over and just take a look at it. Take a look at the fine print while I'm talking to you here. These are the symbols that I came across. I was unfortunately unable to copy paste superscript numbers because it's a Mac and for some reason it didn't translate well on Kendo. But you have these little arrows and asterisks and little dagger signs and double dagger and hashtag. Just take a look at all of them. On the women's Horlicks, I can count approximately eight little superscripts. So you also have to go, sorry about that, you also have to go and find the information which is used to backup that claim but also used to sort of creatively display that claim on the principal display panel. Here we go. So these are your claims over here. Taller, more bone area, more stronger muscle, better concentration. And this is for the children's Horlicks. I do have a box over here. So I will refer to it over here because I couldn't get all of the information and there's just a lot. There's a lot of it over here and a lot of claims over here as well. So let's take a look. Here we go. So children having Horlicks every day were taller, stronger, plus mark and sharper compared to those who did not. And this is everyday consumption of Horlicks. Now these are the claims. I'm reading this out here verbatim. These are the claims based on a study conducted in 1999 to 2000 comparing micronutrient enriched beverages versus non-fortified placebo. What does non-fortified placebo mean? Non-fortified placebo basically means that there are no vitamins or minerals that are artificially added to this. And the placebo could be just milk, but I highly doubt that it is or it could be water. We don't know because it just says non-fortified placebo. However, this can be interchanged with anything. It doesn't have to be Horlicks. It can be boost. It can be Milo. It can be Bonvita. So it's not necessarily just this brand one and two. Anything is going to be proven to give you stronger, make you stronger, taller, sharper if it's compared with non-fortified placebo, which could essentially be just water. Take a look at the ingredients over here. This is not too bad. So malt is a process. Malting is a process which is controlled germination of a cereal grain. And what occurs over here is that the germination happens under a specific temperature and to a specific extent, which allows the enzymatic activity to break down the starch as well as the proteins in the cereal grain. And this allows the starch and the proteins, which are broken down by the enzymes right now because of germination, to be more bioavailable and more easily available to digest. So it's the nutrition that will also be absorbed better, but it also digests better and you take up less energy digesting it. This is malted barley, 39%. And then there's 25% Ata. So in 100 grams of, in 10 grams of your powder, 2.5 grams is Ata. 14% milk solids, sugar, again, wheat protein, which is wheat gluten. And then you have your minerals, emulsifier, and vitamins. Soy protein isolate as well, but that is so tiny because I know how much impulsifier actually goes into this. And the soy protein isolate is actually lesser than the salt in this. Ingredients are listed in descending order, which means that the largest is first. So the largest first ingredient here in the children's horlicks is malted barley. The second largest is wheat flour. The third one is milk powder. The fourth one is sugar. And sugar, you don't get a percentage over here. But what you can do if you can actually go back to the per 100 grams nutrition table over here and you scroll down, scroll down, scroll down. And you can see it in really tiny font over here. It's of which sugar sucrose, which is a disaccharide made up of glucose and fructose, is 13.5 grams, which means it is 13.5%. So it was okay to say milk solids are 14%, but sugar is 13.5%. They don't want to mention that in the ingredient list. It's not great. 200 ml of milk, three heat teaspoons, and then you mix and that's how you get a milk supplemented or fortified milk in this case. What we do not get to see over here, sorry, what we do not get to see over here is the nutritional information with milk or without milk. We don't know whether this nutritional information that is there is with milk or without milk. This is a nutritional information for milk. So you can take a look. I just require a little bit of math and I'm not going to lie. It is very confusing and it's just a lot easier to believe that no added sugar, calcium, the bone nutrition specialist over here, which we'll see in the next one. You can see it over here. It's just much easier to look at the advertising panel because it just takes up so much more real estate and it gives you all these claims and we tend to believe them rather than not. I mean like the key to actually reading food labels is to be suspicious of everything that's on the principle display panel. Like over here you can see this little asterisk over here or this hashtag over here. You can see this little superscript one over here. You can see this little arrow over here, 100% RDA of calcium. Just to give you some perspective over here, 100% RDA of calcium can also be achieved by powdering half an egg shell and consuming it with a little bit of acid like lime juice or tamarind juice. That will give you 100% RDA of calcium. So RDA is required daily allowance. 100% RDA of vitamin D over here and then 100% of RDA of vitamin K2. Now vitamin D, they're not very many dietary sources. We primarily get our vitamin D from sunlight and UVB sunlight, which is recommended you get about 10 to 30 minutes, maybe a little bit longer of midday sunlight and that will be enough vitamin D for your body for that day. Vitamin K2 is something that is found very easily in a lot of greens and is not necessarily lacking in most people. Vitamin K2 does actually help in bone absorption, bone development and bone health by helping vitamin D help absorb the calcium better. What is the role of calcium over here? The calcium helps build your bones and helps keep your calcium channels ready and working within your skeletal muscle, but vitamin D allows for the absorption of calcium from your gut. Otherwise it takes it from the bones to actually maintain the calcium channels that are required for your skeletal muscle to work properly. So these are the claims that you have on your principle display panel. Here we go. After the age of 30, bone mineral density may start to decrease. True. Why? Because you don't get enough vitamin D, which will then not allow the calcium that you are eating to be absorbed by the body. So it's vital for you to go out into the sun and get your vitamin D. So what happens if you don't get enough vitamin D? Because you don't go outside, it starts taking it away from the bones. Calcium for strong bones is in an asterisk over here. And let me just find that over here. So I'm not sure if you can see this over here, but you know, this is really fine. And my eyesight is fine. They make it very, very difficult for you to actually find all the claims that are available. And it's just like, it's very, very difficult. And I've seen this multiple times. It's just very difficult for me to find it as well. So it provides 100% of it contains. And then you can see this little dollar sign over here. Now this dollar sign I've actually contains calcium as much as in half a liter of milk. But they don't, I mean, like you might think that this is per serving, but it's actually for 100 grams of product. And if it's for 100 grams of product, take a look. They're asking you to do twice a day. And that's 30 grams of product over there. And they're also including the nutrition of the milk, which is not, which is not disclosed over here on the packaging. But then this claim, it's just there. It's very easy to pick and choose the numbers as they see fit. It's not necessarily that it's for 30 grams serving or if it's for a 250 ml serving or if it's for 100 ml of milk. You do need to definitely be suspicious of these little guys over here. And you definitely need to do some amount of math to see what kind of nutrition you're actually getting. Now let's go to the ingredients over here. The small extract, again, 47%, milk solids, and then there's hydrolyzed corn solids. Now hydrolyzed corn solids are basically made from concentrating corn syrup and then hydrolyzed with enzymes. They're essentially sugar in that sense. And that is how they get away with staying. That is how they get away with saying no added sugar because they're replacing it with hydrolyzed corn solids, which is made with concentrated corn syrup to less than 10% of water and then hydrolyzed with food grade acids or enzymes. They're used as a sweetener in a dry baby formula, powdered coffee cleaners and powdered drink mixes. And the regulations don't make them say that, you know, this is just as bad as sugar or this is just as effective as sugar in providing glucose to you. Let's go on to a particular topic of interest to me, just primarily this. Now this is used for elderly people. And this is a particular interest to me because my father was diagnosed with late stage prostate cancer, which metastasized to his stomach and his lymph nodes and his bones. And he went through intensive chemotherapy and then intensive radiation therapy. And then they just said, oh, yeah, just, you know, there was no nutrition chart given. There was no diet chart given. They just said avoid sugar, avoid carbohydrates. And they said, okay, you can, you can maybe have inshore. And when I took a look at the label, I was quite surprised that they would recommend something like that. But then I realized that doctors are human as well. And it's not their job to prescribe the diet chart or the nutrition chart for us. And they to just see the principal display panel versus the actual nutritional facts and the ingredients. Let's go. There's the strength with the little asterisk over here. Let's go discover what that is if we can find it. Ensure has complete balanced nutrition with 32 nutrients like high protein, calcium, vitamin D and iron, provides 100% RDA of vitamin A, E. This is also something that is easily replaced with a multivitamin or with a really well-balanced salad. But you do need to know what contains what, which a lot of people do. I mean, we do learn it in school. We do learn it in college to some extent with regards to vitamins and minerals and what foods contain them and what foods don't. Here we go. All claims. You can see the little dollar sign over here. Take water or milk. And these are the claims over here. And this is vital nutrients to support strength, immunity and energy. If you can look here, it says all claims are applicable to mixing six scoops of Ensure with water. 150 ml, 190 ml, six scoops is required. And it's not intended to be used as a sole source of nutrition. Here are the ingredients. Skimmed milk powder, which is basically spray-dried milk without the fat. Multidextrin, sucrose, sugar, edible vegetable oil, FOS or fructose or the gocaccharide, mineral vitamins. Minerals and vitamins are available one pill. They'll basically cover your RDA for the day. Multidextrin is a polysaccharide and that's used as a food additive. It is produced from vegetable starch, again like corn starch, and it has a higher glycemic index than sugar. How do they manage to slow down that absorption is by adding fructose or the goccharide. So this is essentially milk powder, sweetener again, and then sugar on top of it and then you have sunflower oil. It's just easier to give them a ragi malt or a wheat malt or just badam powder with a little bit of milk. This has so much sugar in it and my father was advised to not take any sugar and to reduce his carbohydrates intake and to make sure that he had non-refined carbohydrates. If you take a look at the per 100 grams over here you can see sugar, sucrose, because multidextrin isn't considered sugar again. It's 14.7% of the total package over here with regards to the powder. What I'm trying to get at is that there will be professionals that will recommend things just on the basis of the PDP, which is the principal display panel. But whenever you see a symbol over here, they have to have to buy law, back up the claims that they are speaking of, and that is when you can trace it back to the kind of claims that they're making. And that is when you can trace it back to the study that's been done with regards to a comparison with a fortified beverage versus a non-fortified placebo, which could just be water.  These are just some breakdowns of the hydrolyzed cornstarch. Multitol, again, sugar alcohol, it is used as a sweetener, but by regulatory law it doesn't need to be labeled as an added sugar. However, you can take a look at what it comprises of. You have the carbohydrate. 100 grams of multitol is 100 grams of carbohydrate. The only thing that is that it's actually 210 calories versus regular carbohydrate, which is about 400 calories for every 100 grams or four calories per gram. Multitol is also a watch out for it because it also has, it also basically breaks down into glucose and has higher fiber. But that also has laxative effects because it draws water from the walls of your large intestine and can cause some amount of dehydration. What are the alternatives? Now, I'm not recommending this brand over here. I just, this was the first one that came out that actually had some information about it. But try and find co-ops. We now are understanding and realizing that, you know, nutritionally dense foods are available locally and there is some wisdom behind it. I mean, when our parents were making baby food, they were, they were germinating, they were roasting, they were grinding to a fine porous and they were adding it into milk. If milk is your choice of beverage and if you want to fortify it, try and find co-ops, try and find local people, try and find local manufacturers that actually do something like this. For example, in Bangalore, Navdarshanam is an incredible co-op and you can see the ingredients right here. It's sprouted, ragi, wheat, green gram and vadaam. That's it. Four ingredients. There's no emulsifier, there's no soy protein isolate, there's no artificial flavors. You can and you can control the kind of sugar that you want in this. I use this when I mix it with cocoa and one teaspoon of sugar, which is approximately about five grams and this makes about a 250 ml glass of milk, fortified milk and this is perfect for me. It gives me what I require on a nutritional basis and if I have, if I'm lacking something or if there's not enough sunlight for me to go out and get, I take a multivitamin tablet. Multivitamin tablets, this is 60 tablets for about 295 rupees, approximately 300 rupees. It's five rupees a tablet. One kg of ensure is 1,058 rupees. You're going to have to do the math and really try and understand whether a little bit of skimmed milk powder, some auto and some amount of germinated cereal grain is worth with five rupees worth of five or 10 rupees worth of multivitamin tablets is worth 1,058 rupees. And it can you, I know it's convenient, but can you actually find an alternative that is better for yourself, for your children and for your elderly. These are some of the references I've used. The FSSAI website is actually quite comprehensive and they are constantly taking in feedback and getting better. So if you do want to make a change from a regulatory perspective, take a look, pay attention to the labels and then right into the FSSAI and they will actually go ahead and see what it's about. And if it's not according to regulations, then they will find the company. The rest of these are articles with regards to hydrolyzed corn syrup or hydrolyzed corn solids, multi-tall, multi-dextrin, and with regards to vitamin K2, vitamin B, and their uses and their sources, et cetera. So I'm happy to take questions or if you guys have food packages that you would like to discuss. I'd love to be able to learn with you.


Welcome to Monet Cafe Studio. I'm artist Susan Jenkins, and I love bringing you guys along with me on new painting adventures. Have you ever tried creating two paintings at the same time? Well, that's what I did, and I realized I can share with you so many advantages to painting in this way. And I think if you try this method of painting, you'll be pleasantly surprised by the loose and painterly results. Even beginner artists will love this lesson, for I'll be going over so many of the principles for pastel painting that should work for artists of every level. All right, are you ready to get started? Let's begin this pastel painting adventure. So let me just talk about the products that I'm going to be using for this pastel painting tutorial. I love the surface. It's called pastel matte. I've used it often, but I've never used this green pad before. This was actually gifted to me by a beautiful artist friend, and this has some beautiful greens in it, a blue and even a white. And I'm using this foresty green color. It's a large pad, but I have marked off an area to be 11 by 14 for each painting. I'm going to start with some pastel sets. I get a question all the time is, do you keep your sets as sets, do you incorporate them into a larger workshop palette of pastels? Well, I've been painting with pastels for years, so I do have my workshop palette of everything arranged by color and value, and I love that. I love to paint that way. But now when I get some new sets that I like, I like to kind of keep them to themselves because sometimes I like to just pull them out and paint from them and then add pastels as I go. So the two sets that I'm going to be working with, the first one I'll share with you is a Jack Richardson landscape set. I believe it's 40. Yeah, it's 40 of their hand rolled pastels. The quality is awesome. I love Jack Richardson pastels. I also love the fact that they are the perfect size. This is their full stick of the hand rolled pastels and some pastel sticks are large and I have to break them. Of course, they also sell pastels, many brands in half sticks. So these are already the perfect size. So I love that. I also selected this set because I liked how it had some nice neutrals in the set as well. And as much as I love color, I also know that neutrals are very powerful in a painting. They are what will make your colorful items or subject matter just shine and sparkle. The other set that I pulled out is this sweet little unison half stick set. It's called the unison starter half stick set. It's 30 half sticks. This is what I mean by half sticks. Their full six stick is obviously double this size. And I really liked some of the colors in the set. There were some nice cool greens and a vibrant turquoise. I love that too. Some pretty warm yellows here too as well. I also pulled some yellows that I just have some extra yellows. I find that a lot of pastel sets come with a lot of yellows and oranges. And I find that I don't paint a lot with yellow and oranges. So I'm glad our theme this month is called Hello Hot Stuff. We're working on the warm side of the color wheel. So I hope you love these paintings of these fields of yellow flowers cascading over a meadow into the sunlight. I am speeding up the sketching portion. It's a very simplified sketch. Basically some tree shapes, a horizon line, and a few little gestural marks for the grasses in the meadow. And I have superimposed the final paintings on the right side where you can see them as I paint. And if you happen to see my recent tutorial just before this one, you know that I have been experimenting with A.I. technology and creating my own reference photography, which is what I did in this case. I created two really stunning photographs of some yellow flowers in a field.  Now the remainder of this is sped up only slightly for my patrons on my Patreon page. The Monet Cafe version of this tutorial will have lots of instruction. Don't worry, but I will speed up, especially some of the middle to end portions of this. Alright, what am I doing right now? I am using one of the pastels from the Jack Richardson set. I love this little medium value, kind of neutral blue. When I say neutral, I mean it's not a blue that's just, you know, going to jump out at you. It's just a little more subdued. And it's the perfect middle value I thought to get started. Often I start with my darks first, but lately I have been embracing getting in some middle values to begin with and then getting in a few of my darks and lights. That way I've got a nice range of all of the values that will be in the painting. And with these middle values, I know that I can make them darker by layering. So I like to just go ahead and fill in anything that would be a middle to a dark value. I'll layer my dark on top of this middle value as I work. So these are just really basic gestural marks just to give my idea of some of the values within this meadow. And you can see in the reference images that, or the actual paintings that I have superimposed here that this field has some hills and valleys. So I'm getting my blue pastel that I'm working with here in the areas of where I see those shadowy areas, like where the hill would be rolling or in the foreground. Notice too that I'm making very gestural marks. I felt like the second one that I'm working on here, the one to the right, it had some sweeping motion to it. And I really wanted to capture that even as early on as the underpainting stages.  This is pretty simple tree shapes. Often I think we overthink things and overwork them. So just get in basic shapes. At this point, we're not doing leaves and branches. All right, now I have a darker pastel. This is kind of a darker blue. And this is what I meant by I can layer my dark value over my middle value. Now things that are closer to us typically have a darker value. I mean, keep that, you know, in reference to what the element is. But usually if you've got deep grasses in the foreground, those grasses are going to look darker than grasses in the middle ground or further away. And if you have trees closer to you, those trees are going to be darker in value than trees that are in the middle or further away. Like, value gradually gets lighter in the distance. And a perfect example of this is mountains. It's something called aerial perspective. When you have air literally between you and the distance, the more air that there is, it acts as a filter. And it's going to take away not only the value, make things lighter, it's going to take away warm colors. So you have cooler values in the distance. And again, like mountains, they start to look blue and purple, right? You know they're green with trees. So that's just two artistic principles if you're a beginner to keep in mind. Values are darker in the foreground, lighter as they recede. Colors are usually warmer in the foreground and cool off as they recede into the distance. And there you already have two very easy artistic principles. If you're a patron of mine, I will include a graphic that I've made that easily represents those two rules I just described. And if you're wondering, what's a patron? It's a way you can support this channel and get all the extra goodies. I'm always talking about on my Patreon page. So check it out. Also, now's a great time. If you're liking this video, if you wouldn't mind clicking the like button. Also, I love to hear from you. Leave me a comment. And by all means, please subscribe to this channel. Now I'm working on my lighter value. Recall I got my middle value in first that medium blue, then my darker values. And now I'm just getting in some of the lightest values. Now here's another thing to keep in mind with landscape paintings. Typically, your lightest values are going to be in the sky, believe it or not, even for night scenes. The sky will be lighter than other values in the scene. I did notice in the AI image that I say I created it, you create them verbally. I shared a lot about my technique for doing that in my last video that was a Patreon version of it. So my patrons got a lot of the techniques of how I do this. And I was so pleased everybody embraced it. And so many of my patrons are already creating their own reference images in that way. It's fascinating. Now I'm using a little bit of a lighter value and it's a bit of a lavender. Very soft, pretty lavender. I think this one is also from the Jack Richardson set. Oh, wonderfully, I ended up not using many other pastels other than these two sets. Of course, that little tray of yellows that you saw me pull out. So I did have some additional yellows, but I'd say I pulled less than 10 other pastel colors. So it's kind of neat to see that you can really do a lot with just some minimal soft pastel supplies. I have many videos here on Monet Cafe where I create paintings with just one small set. Actually that little starter set of unison pastels that I held up at the beginning of this tutorial is one of them. So now I've got in my lightest value and at these stages I'm not super concerned that the color is perfect. I want the value to be right and that pinkish lavender seemed to work well. Now I'm working some more of this turquoise just down into some of the cloud shapes. And again, I'm not concerned about getting, there are some in the reference image that I created with AI. There are clouds in the distance, but I'm not so concerned, especially at this stage, about getting them in perfectly. I'm creating basically just some general shapes, colors and values. And if you like an impressionistic style, which you probably know I do if you've been to my channel much, this is the best way to work. Don't even think right now about anything having a large amount of detail. We're just barely suggesting things with value. I say value first because it's primary. Getting that value right is more important than getting the color right. What you've seen so far was real time and I'm just speeding it up a bit here. So the whole painting or two paintings took me a couple of hours. So I don't want you to have to sit through two hours worth. And I really think when I speed it up slightly like this, you can get a lot of information. And so I'm filling in. This is called a blocking in stage where my first goal is to block in the entire surface with value and color that represents my image very loosely. And I want you to notice too that I am going to talk about the advantages of painting in this switching off technique. You'll notice that I go from one to the other. I'm not going to paint one whole painting and then move on to the next one. When I use a color on one, like on the left side here, I'll see if I see that color on the other side. And sometimes I'll actually, not a lot, but sometimes in this I'll actually use my right hand instead of my left hand. You see how now I just took that same kind of peachy color. There was a lot of like sunset glow in this painting. So therefore this peach worked really nicely. And let me go ahead and talk about what I consider advantage number one to painting double like this or companion pieces if you want to call them. It really helps to develop a loose and painterly style. Even though I tend to paint loose anyway, I found this technique really gave me that final result that I'm often looking for.  It's just things are very suggestive and surreal in a way. I think the reason for this is because I'm continually moving from one painting to the other. For example, when I have this green in my hand, I'm going to see where I can use it in the other painting. And thus I believe it keeps my strokes more loose and prohibits me from getting too detailed in any one area. Now you can see I've been adding a pretty cool middle value green. I believe this one is from the Unison Hastings set. I know that a lot of grasses in the shadows are going to be a little bit cooler. They're not getting as much sunlight, so they're they've cooled off a little bit. And so I'm using this green on areas in the grasses where there might be a shadow side to the grasses. You'll probably notice thus far my colors have all been on the cool side of the color wheel. And I want a field that glows. So the cool colors were to get down my shadows and my darker values. And now I've got to add some warmth. I'm going to have a golden field with a sunset and I do want some warmth. So I'm using a darker it's kind of a almost like a brownish brick red dark color that I'm just sprinkling in layer. That's my new word. I say sprinkle all the time now layering in some of the foreground. I'm also getting an even darker pastel to establish some of my darkest values. Some of those deep roots in the grasses and some of the trees that are closest to the viewer. And keep in mind again beginner artists that the colors that you're putting down to begin with are a layer. We're not necessarily creating the final color that will be there, but we're learning to paint from the inside out. I call it where I'm getting my deepest values and colors in knowing that I'm going to layer on top much like it happens in nature. With those grasses, for example, there's some deep areas of the grasses that are going to be dark. But there are going to be some lighter areas on top. And thus here I am using a lighter warmer color getting some of my warm tones that are in some of these grasses and flowers established on areas that are more of the tops where the sunlight will be hitting. And again, you can see I'm taking the same colors and moving from one painting to another, which leads me to advantage number two. And that advantage is painting in this way causes you or maybe forces you to really examine what values and colors are actually there. For example, let's take value when I had put down that darkest color in the grasses. I immediately go to the second image and I examine and I can see, oh, that value is the same as the first one I just put down. So we're training our eyes to really hone in on those values and represent them more accurately. I hope that makes sense because I totally found that to be true with painting double in this way. And the same thing happens with color. Okay, that's advantage number three. I believe it fine tunes our eyes to notice those subtleties of color and more easily identify where they are in an image and how to find a pastel that will represent that well. To reiterate, I believe we're training our eye to correspond with what we really see in an image and therefore training our brain to recognize it. And in time, all of these things become second nature. They become habit. And I think sometimes when we focus on one painting, we can become too hyper focused on the details. And I know probably some of you have been there and you're just overworking it and your values don't seem right. And the more you work at it, the more frustrated you get. And I really love how creating two paintings like this kind of relieved some of that. I really felt like it kept my already pretty loose work even more loose and I enjoyed the process more therefore. You know, sometimes painting can get frustrating if you're getting over detailed. So okay, there's a fourth advantage. It's more fun. You're going to enjoy it more. And I always recommend creating an environment when you paint that is going to be conducive to peace and creativity. I love putting on soft music. I often love music without words. If you've heard of the cello artist Hauser, I just love listening to his cello music while I paint and he's so darn handsome. That's an extra perk. He actually reminds me a bit of my youngest son. Now let's get back to this. As you can see, I'm working with a green pastel now. It's still a bit darker, medium to darker value. And I'm scumbling this in areas where I know there are some grasses or stems, grasses, the support for the flowers. And this is a really pretty blue. I showed it because it's part of a Sennelier soft pastel set that if you get serious about soft pastel, so you start and you're like, okay, I'm really liking this. I would like to get a set that is a great value and also excellent pastels. I recommend the Sennelier set of 120 half sticks. It's one of the best bangs for your buck. And that's another Sennelier pastel right there that is going to really give you such a great selection of color and value. So I am using some of those cooler tones there for the trees because even in the image that I was working from, again, if you're a patron of mine, you're going to get copies of this AI image that I created in Adobe Firefly. But the trees had a greenish blue tone. And often I just look for these subtleties of color and I try to incorporate it throughout the painting as well. That's called color echoing. You could see how I added some of those same colors in the grasses. Now I'm just using that beginning blue to get down a value for some distant trees. And what am I doing now? I'm giving it a little bit of a lighter value to, I'm doing the same thing now on the right side, a little bit of a lighter value will push some of the trees back even further. I love creating distance in a painting. You see how that just really gave like the idea that something is further away. And this is really all about just suggesting things. And we never have to totally follow our reference image. We use it as a guide or a suggestion and let it take us to a place that we see in our minds. I know sometimes this is harder when you're first starting out. Goodness knows I could not do that when I was first starting painting. I had to hold very rigidly to the reference image. But the more you paint, the more your own artistic expression will come out. You'll develop your own style. Here you can see I needed a few more darks in the reference or the image on the left. The reference image that I created with Adobe Firefly, the trees were larger. They were closer. So those trees are going to remain a little bit darker than eventually my trees on the right will be. Now I'm adding a little bit of this dark green. That's actually part of the, I think that's a green from the Jack Richardson set that I showed at the beginning of this tutorial. And as I mentioned, I primarily used the two sets that you saw at the beginning and some of the yellows. I had my little yellow tray. I think it was probably less than 10 extra pastels. I'm almost positive it was less than 10. So again, you can see I'm cooling off some of these trees. And what's happening with that is it's causing them to appear further away. Can you see that happening right before your eyes? When you add cooler tones, it pushes things back. Now there was some light highlighting on some of these trees. So I just scumble in some of that color on some of the even darker trees to suggest leaves. Now what I'm doing here is using a, I found out this works great with pastel matte, the surface. It's a chamois cloth. I bought a big old piece of it at the dollar store. I'm speeding it up because you know, it's kind of, you can figure it out. And I cut off little squares of it and I use it to blend with. You see how that just kind of softened everything? So now it's finally time to get to some of these yellows, right? You saw that in the beginning of this video, this is a field of glowing yellow flowers and sunlight. And all of that work to finally get to the yellows. And I had to lay this foundation. Think of it just like you would plant a garden. You don't all of a sudden see yellow flowers, right? You've got to have the earth and the dirt and the foundation and that is what your initial layers are. And then the flowers and then of course the grasses. And then the flowers are the sprinkle on the top and the icing on the cake, so to speak. Now my mark making for things in the distance is usually going to be a little more horizontal. Things kind of flatten out as they go into the distance. If you think of massive groups of flowers, they get closer together, they get shorter. You don't see like stems way far away. So that's why my strokes are more horizontal in the distant and the middle ground and the background and in the middle ground.  Well, that's kind of the same thing I'm saying. And they will start to eventually get really taller and in the foreground and you'll be able to see individual flowers. Now I noticed in the image I created that these yellow flowers seem to be cascading up a hill. So that's why you see my mark making moving upward. Also I'm purposely pressing a little bit harder in some areas. You see how it's giving the idea of little individual flowers. I don't want it everywhere, just a few and you'll see me develop that more as I paint. Now I lost a little bit of my shadowy area. When I first started the underpainting on this one, particularly in the right, it had this nice swooping feel with almost like a path, a trail underneath. So I don't want to lose that. That's what a lot of the underpainting is about is creating those shadows and valleys that will lead your viewer through your painting. I'm continuing with this yellow. And by the way, these are yellows that I hardly ever use. So that was just such a wonderful experiment for me. And I recommend you try that more often. If you've been painting with pastels for a while and you notice there's certain colors you just don't use, pull them out, maybe try painting double like this. Again, I found so many advantages to doing this and see what kind of magic you might create. So continuing to develop the yellow flowers and the rest of this is going to be that I always call it, it's like a dance. I love it when I get my original or my initial foundations in and then I can really start exploring and playing and enjoying the moment of painting. Okay, I've been talking about 24 minutes now. I hope you guys have hung in there for this long. And this will be the end of the commentary for the Monet Café version. If you're seeing this on the Monet Café YouTube channel, then you're going to see the rest of the painting, but there won't be any more commentary until I come back at the end. So don't go anywhere.  And we're going to talk more about layering these flowers and some of my techniques. All right, enjoy this lovely music. And also, if you would, please go ahead and click that like button to this video. If you haven't already, it really does help YouTube to share this video more. And I mean it when I say leave me a comment. I'd like to know what you thought about this and, of course, subscribe. So enjoy this music and please watch to the end. That also really helps. I'll be back soon. And now it is time to sign these paintings. And here's another benefit. Benefit, what am I at? Number five, you have two paintings when you're done. Double the fun, right? And they make lovely companion pieces. By the way, I did put these in my Etsy shop if they're still available, both of these original. And I have them available as prints on my Fine Art America site. They do a fantastic job. I really like the canvas prints because you can hang them right on the wall without the need for framing. I also recommend get the matte finish if you get a canvas print. So I hope you learned a lot in this tutorial. And if you're a patron of mine, I am really looking forward to seeing your recreations in our homework album. As always, God bless everyone and happy painting.


So, welcome back. So, we received one question from Param Ayer, and he's asking about how many slots are allocated for micromaster students to get into the blended program. So for the blended program, this is, let's say, is the second part of the micromaster credential. So, the blended program, only those of you that complete the five SCX courses plus the CFX and earn the micromaster credential are the only ones that can apply to the blended program. So, the five month residential program is a blended program designed for the micromaster student. So, it's like the second part of the micromaster credential program. Exclusive for them? Exclusive for micromasters students. However, we also have the 10 month residential program, the supply chain master degree, 10 month program. This program anyone can apply even if some of you has already completed one or two or three of the SCX courses, you can apply to the 10 month residential program even if you didn't complete any of the SCX courses. In the admission process, we are now starting to take into consideration also those students that already completed at least one or two or some of the SCX courses are the performance, but for the 10 month program anyone can apply and need to meet the requirements and the criteria for the selection process, definitely, for the blended only for micromasters students. It's the second part of the micromaster credential. Okay, great. Excellent. Excellent. So, go back to the topic. Perfect. So, yeah, welcome back from the breakout session. Now we are going to discuss about how do you think that the growth of e-commerce will impact the design of supply chains in these four areas, network design, procurement, distribution strategies and supply chain finance. So, I want first of all, first, before it's starting with the discussion, I want to talk a little bit about the buying process. So, if we talk about the buying process, we can differentiate different aspects. First, discovering this is when we realize that we need to buy a new product. And once we identify the necessity to buy a new product, then we start searching, searching, looking for which is the retailer that offer the best deal, looking for this product through different channels, through different ways. More information about the product. More information. It's just to look for features, characteristics, specifications, the price, the service level. Maybe also reviews. Reviews. If we are in an online environment, yes, also reviews. Then the third step is to buy. It's when we, okay, we already look for the product, we compare the different options, and now we decide that we want to buy this one. The next step is delivery. So, if every single step happening in a traditional retailer store, typically we go to the store, all of this step is going to happen there. And typically, we're going to buy the product and grab the product and go home with our product. The last step is the return. When we, okay, we are not, finally, for any reason, we want to, we don't want the product and we want to return. So, in the traditional environment, let's say that every single step happened in the traditional retailer, however, currently, this current, this different step can happen anywhere. Because of we have different options, we can use the computer, we can use the smartphone, we can use the tablet in order to access to online retailers to search. Definitely, we can search online, we can buy online. If it is a software product, we can receive online the product. If it is a physical product, then we still need to figure it out how we are going to reach the final consumer, definitely. And for the return, same thing. If it is a physical product, online retailers need to figure it out how many options and which options they are going to offer to the customer in order to return their product. So, what's happened now is that any single step can happen almost anywhere. And this, at the end, for the retailers' point of view, from the manufacturer's point of view and also for the carriers, and all of the different actors involved in the supply chain is they need to manage this new paradigm, this new environment that I just, I choose this image in order to represent the mess for this, this problem, basically in terms of a network design problem. So, this is what we are going to discuss now. Yeah, let's see the questions we have received and let's start with the next question. Okay, so we have the answer for one of the breakout rooms. Yes. So, in relation to the network design, they say that it becomes more complicated due to increasing nodes and arcs, more collection points versus disease warehouse setup. That's related to network design. Okay, so, regarding network design, I fully agree with you guys. The retailers now, they need to think about how they are going to redesign the distribution strategy in order to decide how many different distribution channels they want to offer to their customer. For instance, let's think about a traditional department store. They already have their traditional retailers. The customers can go to these retailers, but in addition to that, they can also send the online order to home, use the home delivery option. But some of them currently are offering their customer pickup points. Those that already have their traditional retailers try to offer their own traditional retailer as a pickup point. But those that do not have that, like the pure players for Amazon, what they are doing is they are having agreement with other or traditional retailers to offer this as a pickup point. They are also considering automated package stations as a pickup point or the lockers, or they are also like Amazon buying four-foot chains, the grocery store in order to offer these as a physical point of sale for their customer and also as a physical pickup point to their customers. So I fully agree with you that in terms of the network design, the retailers need to think about how they are going to redesign. They need also to think about how many distribution channels they want to offer to their online customer. In terms of the nodes, they also mentioned the increased number of nodes. I also agree with this part because service level is also very relevant here. Very important and at the end for the network design, this is going to be translated to be closer to the final consumer and to be closer to the final consumer. One way to get that is with an intermediate people. So in addition to have our distribution center for these last-mile deliveries, sometimes we are going to also think about to locate some intermediate people in order to reach this final consumer in a shorter window. It's faster, again faster. So yeah, great point. Great point. Okay, so the same group but in this case related to procurement. Yeah. So they are mentioned a higher pressure to drive down procurement costs due to the increased transportation costs from network complexity. So two things here. So you are talking about a higher pressure for procurement. In procurement, I see here that definitely you can have access to a bigger portfolio of suppliers. Also it's easier to compare the different suppliers, the different product features and components they are offering to you. Yeah, at the end this can be more competitive definitely from the procurement point of view. You also mentioned transportation. I think that transportation costs you mean here the last mile deliveries and the last mile transportation that I agree that in this new context the costs, the logistics costs associated to the last mile delivery is going to be higher than in the traditional retailer environment. So for transportation, yes the increase of this cost. If you mean here that the increase of the transportation cost is because of having global suppliers. I don't know if they refer to global suppliers but another thing here in procurement is we are going to have access to more suppliers and global suppliers. So in this sense, yes, I also agree that transportation, the costs associated to the transportation of these raw material components might be increased because of that. Okay, thank you, thank you Eva. So we have the response from another team. So related to the network design, the physical flow, so they are mentioned that they have new technologies enabling in delivery of goods faster like using drones, robotics and setting up warehouses closer to the consumers refrigerators to store and deliver it within a command. Yes, I think you mentioned some of this. Yeah, this is a great point, the new technologies and this is something that we are going to cover in messy forex in supply chain technology and system. We are going to add a whole week talking about nutrients and on these nutrients one we are going to talk about these drones and another one is robotics because of, you're right, drones, yeah, drones is more related to two things transportation again for the last my deliveries. To be honest, I do not see the drones going to the apartments and to the final consumer, especially big cities, but definitely some companies are investing in drones and are considering that also for reaching the intermediate people or more than that the distribution center. So drones is one of the new trends that companies are investing in and considering just to sometimes to reach the distribution center or the intermediate people and in addition to that robotics, robotics and warehousing. And yes, I think that the these changes and these new technology are definitely helping in how to handle materials in a warehouse in order to do it in a more efficient way and in order to at the end have the capability to prepare the online order faster in order to at the end have a faster delivery. So yeah, both great points. We will discuss more about that in SC4X. Excellent. Thank you. Thank you, Eva. And thank you again for being here. Any final remarks that you want to share with the students? I just want to encourage you to use the discussion forum. I think it's a great place to collaborate with your peers and to ask any question related to the learning space. Always, always use the SC2X health email account if you have any questions related to the assessment part of the course, the great assignment, the nature of the final. We are always, always very open to receive your feedback. So do not hesitate to share with us any feedback that you have related to the course. Happy to receive that. Happy to improve the course based on your comments. Yeah, that's all. Welcome again. Have a great, great learning experience with us. Thank you. Thank you, Eva. And to close this event, a couple of reminders. So don't forget that verification upgrade deadline is October the 4th at 1500 UTC. But don't wait until the last time to verify to do it as soon as possible. And also, tomorrow, we are releasing a week-to-material. But you have one additional week to work on grade assignment number one. So grade assignment is due on September 27th at 1500 UTC. And with that, we will close this event. Thank you for being here. And I will see you next, next time. Bye.


We heard Bennett talking about Houston being a team that the numbers love. Do your numbers love Houston too? And what's your view of this South region? I actually have Houston as the second best team in this region. They are missing Marcus Sasser who is one of their guards, a great shooter. He hasn't played for a while. So their excellent numbers reflect their play without him. It's always in the long run going to be hard to miss someone who can shoot higher than 40% from three. Fabian White, last year was one of these workhorse guys got on the offensive glass and kind of did the dirty work for that team. He's turned into Kevin Durant. He wears number 35. He went from shooting like two three-pointers all season last year to hitting 40% of his three-pointers this year. He's kind of a critical piece of that team. So I do like Houston. And yeah, probably don't pick Michigan to the final four. Not nothing I would do.


So my name is Thomas Reif. I was born and raised in Columbus, Ohio. I was born into a very drug-addicted family, generations of drug addiction, and my mother and father were both addicted to drugs. My dad was in and out of prison through my childhood. I just had a very violent, a very traumatic childhood growing up. Eventually I would be placed into foster care with my brother and my sister, and that would end up being a lot more trauma, a lot more violence that it just seemed to follow me through my childhood. At the age of 14, I would be adopted by my mother, Susan. That was a lot better. It seemed like at that time I was pulled out of a very violent environment and placed into a loving home. It still wasn't a Christian home. Throughout my childhood and throughout middle school and high school, I never really thought about God. He just wasn't, simply wasn't on my radar. Now after high school, I went off and I joined the military and I met my wife, Ashley, and right before my deployment to Afghanistan, we got engaged. I went off and I deployed to Afghanistan in 2012. Now, while we were in Afghanistan, it was a mild combat deployment. I did lose my really good friend, Cody Suggs, while we were overseas, and that just took a piece of my heart when he died. I came home and I just struggled with a lot of emotions, a lot of things that I didn't know how to really deal with, a lot of anger. I was just a different person. For me, I thought it was normal just like everyone else that returned from a deployment to Afghanistan or Iraq. It was just a normal part of life. I continued on with life and I kind of just shoved it down. I didn't really think a whole lot of it. I always had this dream. I had a dream of becoming a police officer and eventually to become an narcotics detective. That was my goal in life from a very young age after seeing what drug addiction had done to my family. I got hired by a department in Southern Oregon in 2014 and I achieved my dream. I quickly fell in love with the job and I devoted every ounce of my life to becoming the best police officer that I could be. And throughout my career, I experienced a lot of violence again. I worked in a very violent town, Klamath Falls, Oregon, and there were a lot of homicides. I had to investigate a lot of murders, a lot of fatal car accidents, suicides, child deaths, just a lot of really traumatic things that we would have to investigate, these types of things. It really started to have an effect on me. It started hearted my heart and I would come home and I didn't have any emotions. I didn't know how to feel anymore. I was angry all the time. I was having a hard time sleeping. I was having a hard time concentrating and just focusing and it really started to have an effect when I started to have nightmares and I eventually started to have flashbacks and I would hear kids crying and screaming and I just couldn't get through these emotions and these things that I was feeling and the position that I was in, I had to hide it. I had to keep it a secret. I had to cope with it without letting anyone know. In a way, I did that. I started using alcohol like many combat veterans and first responders do, just to kind of shove down the emotions, to kind of shove down everything that I was feeling. And eventually that didn't work anymore and I started using drugs and it doesn't take a rocket scientist to realize that drugs and being a police officer don't mix very well. I was now a narcotics detective working on a drug team and I got called out to do surveillance one night and I went to the police department and removed what I believed to be cocaine from the evidence locker and I used it and at the time I didn't realize but it was actually 99% pure fentanyl and I had taken enough probably to kill a couple hundred people. The last thing I remember of that night was waking up in the hospital. I was later told that I overdosed, near fatal overdose on the fentanyl. I crashed my detective vehicle and this is where God really intervened into my life. At the time of this crash I was an atheist. I didn't even believe in God. I actually had to argue with Christians as to why God didn't exist and at the time of my crash an ambulance was in the intersection and stopped, loaded me up in the back, rushed me to the hospital that was 10 minutes away and the doctor said if that ambulance hadn't have been there I would have 100% died. Now when I woke up in the hospital I had my lieutenant and sergeant and all these doctors standing around me and I knew that my life had just come crashing down. I knew that nothing was ever going to be the same. I always had a plan for this moment and it was that I was going to commit suicide if this ever came out and that was my plan. I planned as soon as I left the hospital to go home and commit suicide and I went home and all I could think about was the shame and the guilt and the devastation that I caused to my wife and my kids and the people that I had worked with. No one knew that I was struggling like this and I knew inside that this was all going to come out that my secrets of using drugs and struggling with PTSD was going to be a big deal and a few days later my one of my really good friends with the Oregon State Police he came to my house with his pastor and the first thing he said to me was Thomas I'm concerned that if you would have died you would have went to hell and I remember just sitting there thinking about the reality of that and he told me that Thomas I've come because I want to introduce you to God and I remember telling him I said Austin God can't help me I've made a lot of mistakes I've made too many mistakes God can't help me through this and I remember him and his pastor just shared the gospel with me and they said Thomas God loves you it doesn't matter what you've done it doesn't matter the mistakes that you've made God still loves you and he has a plan for your life and he has a purpose and I remember sitting there and I'm like okay well I don't believe that awesome but thank you for coming over and he left and the next day I remember just I couldn't help but think that I needed to figure out who God was I had this burning desire inside of me that I couldn't explain and I became obsessed with trying to figure out who God was and this continued for a few months I would go on to to complete a military Christian program for combat veterans and at that at that time I completely surrendered my life to God and I said Lord if you can reveal yourself to me if you can change my life it is yours and things were still hard I still had to deal with the consequences of my sin the consequences of my actions and I would eventually go on to commit suicide or attempt to commit suicide which led me to being in a military hospital for two months he used this time in the hospital to transform my heart to to give me a heart of flesh to renew my mind and and this was two months where I got to to spend with him and I got to study his word and I got to learn how to be more like Jesus and and how to to follow Jesus and through this I remember waking up one morning it was about five a.m. and I actually woke up and I was just filled with guilt and shame and and this had this heaviness on my heart and at the exact same time I was filled with with this light and I remember it was like a light from heaven just entered into my chest and I was filled with the spirit and and at the time I didn't knew you know what this meant and I and I started to speak in another language that I couldn't understand after about a half hour it stopped and I was sitting there and I knew it was from God I knew that whatever had just happened was from the Lord and he led me to Acts chapter 2 and I began reading where the disciples were in the upper room and they were baptized in the Holy Spirit and everything that had happened in Acts chapter 2 had happened to me and at that moment I remember just sitting there and I was crying and I and I just thought oh my gosh he really is who he says he is and everything changed from that moment forward I remember my wife I called the doctor and she thought I was going crazy and the doctor actually thought I was going crazy but after a little while I was I was no longer on medication I no longer struggled with PTSD I no longer struggled with nightmares or insomnia I was completely healed and delivered from everything in the blink of an eye and after I was released in the hospital I realized that I was called the full-time ministry and I started pursuing full-time ministry and through that the Lord crossed paths with Teen Challenge and I was offered a position to be the director of Adult and Teen Challenge in Tri-Cities I'm now in full-time ministry like I said as the director of Adult and Teen Challenge and and what I have to say though is if you're sitting here today if you're watching this video and you're thinking to yourself that you know I've made some mistakes like that I've destroyed my life maybe you have a broken marriage or you don't see your kids or maybe you're in drug addiction or maybe you're you're simply you're a professional when you made some mistakes and you've destroyed your life but I want to tell you today that Jesus does have a plan for you that God has a plan so I'd invite you today if that's you I'd invite you just to repeat after me Father we thank you we thank you for dying on the cross Jesus for giving us the opportunity to have a new life for rising again on the third day Lord I invite you into my heart to be the the Lord and Savior of my life I invite you to take complete control of my life I surrender my life to you and I thank you so much for being my Savior in Jesus name