I am not really new to Illustrator. I learned a little bit in college, but I am mostly self taught. I have been using Illustrator for about 4 years now. I usually just use the basic tools and stick to what I know, but I am almost positive that I do everything the "long way". This class has already saved me so much time. It's great to start again from the beginning and learn really useful shortcuts and helpful tips. I wasn't really familiar with how handy it is to have multiple Artboards or to embed your images, so this has really helped me a lot so far. I'm excited to start working on more projects, knowing how much faster I'll be able to get them done. 

After I customized my workspace, I created a bear image out of Vector shapes. I used the Polygon Tool and the Direct Selection Tool to manipulate the shapes:

After this, I created a new document with two different Artboards because I knew I wanted to try two different color palettes. I found it really helpful to have the color sample circles above the project, so you always have those to reference when you need to change colors. 

I used to Select Similar Objects Tool to adjust the colors and to group the shapes. Then I saved the project as a PDF file, so I would have both Artboards available. 

Final Update: 

So glad I took this class. Thanks for looking!