Designing a Perfect Diamond

Hello designers! This is a very easy to design diamond which we will be making in Illustrator. We should examine the diamond in details, not to end up having bad remarks from our customers... I took a diamond line art from the Internet. I will use it as a guide to create a perfect diamond.

1. Template Guide:

The first step is to place the reference diamond in the file simply by File: Place. Select the graphic, go to the Layer Palette, click the small arrow to open the menu and select Template from the list. The layer will be locked and the graphic will be transparent so the tracing will be easy.

2. Adding a Guide:

Turn on the rulers by pressing Ctrl/Command + R. Create a new layer, drag in a guide and place it exactly in the center of the diamond as you can see in the image below.

Now turn ON the Snap to Grid option by pressing Shift + Ctrl/Command + ” OR you can simply go to View and select Snap to Grid option. You can now see the grid in the background.

3. Tracing:

In the Layers Palette, create a new layer (click on the new layer icon at the bottom right corner of the Layers palette). Start tracing each part of the diamond using the Pen tool. You can notice that each point snaps to the grid. You should make sure to close each shape while tracing and see if the points meet at the same spot. Continue tracing until the right half of the diamond is complete. You can turn Snap to Grid option and adjust the points manually to make the curves accurate which didn't snap to the grid properly.

4. Reflecting:

Now select the half drawn diamond. Click on Reflect Tool in the Tools pallete. Hold down the Alt/Option key and click on the guide line. A window will pop up. In this window select the Vertical under Axis option and click on Copy button.

5. Combining:

Let’s combine now the center facets with the help of Pathfinder. Select the two facets of the upper half portion. Hold Alt/Option key and click on the Add to shape area option from Pathfinder. (You can open the Pathfinder from Window menu). Similarly combine the two facets on the lower half portion of the diamond.

So finally we are done with the line drawing of the diamond.

6. Color Filling:

Let's fill colors in the diamond we have just created. Use Linear Gradient tool to fill colors in one facet. You need to do some adjustments in the default colors. Just click in the middle of two color buckets in the linear gradient window to add one more color. Make this newly added color bucket black. The stroke does not look good for the facet, so just turn it OFF.

We will color all the facet. Just select all the facet and using eye dropper tool pick the color of the facet that we filled just now. So all the facet will have the linear gradient like you can see below.

Yes, you are correct, currently it looks really horrible, but we'll make it looks nice, I promise... Select all the facet one by one and using the gradient tool adjust the fill color to get the look what's shown below.

The black gradient doesn't look very nice, so lets give it a dark violet touch. Just select all the facet and open the color palette as well as the gradient palette. Select the middle color bucket and make it dark violet from the color palette. This will give a precious look to the diamond.

7. Adding Girdle:

Woops, we forgot to draw the girdle, but we'll make it right now. Draw a simple hexagonal shape, like shown in the image below, using the Pen tool. The shape must match all the four corner points of the girdle so that there would be no gap.

Select this shape and put it behind the diamond. You can just right click on the shape and select Send to Back from Arrange Option. See, the diamond have its girdle now.

8. Glamour:

A diamond looks best with its shiny glow and luminous star burst, right? We can add the glow simply by putting a circle behind the diamond with radial gradient color in it. Select the radial gradient from white to black for this glow. But before that don't forget about adding a black background for the diamond which gives it an even a prettier look.

And now let’s draw the star burst. Just select star tool from the tool palette and draw a star on the diamond. You can try a few things while creating the star. Select star tool and click and drag. While dragging, without releasing the mouse button, use the UP and DOWN arrow key to increase or decrease the number of points of the star.

Here is what your diamond should look like if you followed my tutorial well!

Beautiful shiny Diamond. That's all what we need ;)