Troubleshooting on Illustrator using the shape builder tool and pen tool

Hello,

I am a college student taking Adobe Illustrator. I am working on an assignment that involves tracing and creating an artwork. To be specific, I am drwaing a boat using the pen tool and shape builders tool. I drew a sail using the pen tool that consisted of different paths. I joined these paths to form closed shapes using the shape builder tool. And although the shape builder tool would successful join the paths to create the shapes, it would not fill them with my active fill color. Also, I needed to draw and fill the boat's mast using the pen tool. So, following the instructions I was given, I clicked on the tool bar and on the control panel on top (I was working on the essentials classic workspace) I selected a dark brown fill and no stroke. Once I went to my artwork to draw the mask, the pen tool would successful place anchor points but would not fill my paths with the active color. What can I do to fix this troublshoot? I have already edited my illustrator prefrences to the default and have even unistalled illustrator completely and installed it again. However, none of this has solved the problem. Attached is an example of what I am working on. Please help!

- Addie