Infographic Series: Pine Tree with snow

Lets make a pine tree, with a slip shadow. Darker on one side to give it some implied dimension. Simple. Then add some nice snow to it.

Start with the Polygon Tool.
Draw a Polygon, do not let off the mouse button. If you do click off, you will need to draw the Polygon again.

When drawing, with the mouse held down, use the down arrows on the keyboard to get 3 sides. Up arrow adds sides, down arrow takes sides away. Fill the shape with green.

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With your new triangle selected, hit the Return key.
That will bring up the Move Dialog Box.

Click the Preview on in the lower left corner to see that actions when you put the values in the Position sections.

Set the Horizontal to O and the vertical to 1.5. Or enough to move the triangle down enough to create an off set like a tree would have. 

Click OK when you move the triangle down.
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When the triangle is moved down, and copied as shown to the right, then use COMMAND + D to duplicate the triangle 4 more times.

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When you have several triangles as shown, select all the triangles with the Selection Tool and open the Pathfinder Panel.
Window> Pathfinder.

Choose Unite to make all the triangles one composite shape.

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With the triangles now United as one, choose the Effect Menu>Distort & Transform>Free Transform.

Select the base and pull the bottom side out to form a wider base and click OK.

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Choose Object>Expand Appearance to make the Shape of the tree the actual shape. This will give you the outline of the tree as it appears.

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Draw a rectangle over the right half of the tree. Add a fill of a darker green. 

With both the tree and darker rectangle selected, open the Pathfinder Panel and choose Divide. 

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When you click the Divide in the Pathfinder Panel, then choose Object>Ungroup. Use the Selection Tool to select the extra dark green outside the tree and click Delete.

This will leave both sides of the tree as separate shapes.

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Select each shape with the Direct Selection Tool.

Pull the Live Corners into the center of the tree to round the corners.

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Using the Brush Tool, choose no fill, a stroke color of white and 1 pt to start with. Add some dots of snow, then increase the brush size a bit to get bigger dots of snow.

​Enjoy your tree!