Other Tutorials

At this point I'm going to point you to some other tutorials for the GIMP rather than duplicating good work that someone else has already done: http://www.gimp.org/tutorials.html. Follow through "The Basics" and "Easy Patterns" at least. You'll find some duplication of what I've discussed, and some of the new material that you cover I'll cover again later, but I hope that most of it will be complimentary.