Where should I start? I'm new to mapping.

[Human Jackalope]

I draw my maps by hand on paper. I cannot draw well. I understand tectonics well enough to have realistic mountain range locations and resembling realistic terrain. I have a problem though. Any map I draw by hand has mountains that look like this
/\^<^/\^/\^>^
I know it is so realistic, you have never seen such skill before.

On to the reason I am posting. I enjoy making fantasy worlds. At one point I understood Photoshop well enough to do all sorts of stuff. That was while I was in High School and now 7 years later I want to relearn how to use Photoshop like programs. My Photoshoping was mostly with pictures and playing around with cut and past photos.

I am poor so I downloaded Gimp and started experimenting. While looking around I ran into this post
http://www.cartographersguild.com/sh...p?t=594&page=2
It helped me reacquaint myself with layers and such.

My reason for posting is that I searched the forums and although there are multiple tutorials for doing various things in Gimp I couldn't find a really good introduction tutorial that takes care of basic things like how to make a grassy area look like a grassy area or how to make a swamp like texture. I only vaguely understand many of the mechanics and tools in Gimp so assume I know nothing and please point me toward a really good introduction to fantasy map making tutorial. By the way here is my first ever mountain range (assuming I can figure out how to upload).

I got it uploaded! Oh, and video tutorials work much better for me than written word with picture tutorials that is the only reason I could follow RobA's instructions.