Illustrator Diamond

Coming in to this semester of independent studies I knew i was very bad at working with illustrator. I had never worked with it and made it a goal to get better at it. I worked with the Spoon graphics tutorials and created this diamond. I mainly used the pen tool and gradients to create it. I learned how to import a template and go over it. This was a very useful tutorial for me because it taught me to get more familiar with the tools. The pen tool was very difficult to get the hang of, but i learned how to make shapes, straight lines and even curve the lines. The diamond is just composed of triangles, simple but i learned a lot. This was very difficult for someone who honestly, sucked, with illustrator. I also worked a lot with the gradient tool. I learned how to move the colors back and forth, stretch them out and move the gradient around. It really helped me give the diamond depth make it look like it had shadows and reflections. I really learned a lot from this tutorial and I was able to make something very cool. I know its not a very big assignment but i honestly feel like i was horrible at illustrator and improved a great amount. I feel more comfortable with illustrator now that I went through this tutorial.