Advice for a Newbie

[Alecthar]

I just got in to D&D 4e, but I don't have a local game group to play with, so I do a lot online, either via PbP or MapTools.

I've recently become interested in doing some mapping, both to create maps for custom campaigns, and to recreate maps from some of the published adventures.

I'm currently working with just GIMP and any objects I add in Maptools. I've done some browsing on the Tutorials section of this forum, and I'm a little bit overwhelmed by all the information. I decided that it might be best to do a little "learn as you go" and just start trying to make something in GIMP, just to test things out and see what I could do that would look right and what just looked terrible.

Right now I feel like the stairs and the upper floor look alright, and the columns are serviceable (but I wish I'd made them smaller). The raised sections of the floor (which I had intended to use as pools, of slime/brackish water/etc.) just don't look right to me. I bump mapped them with a couple Gaussian Blurred rectangles, and I just couldn't seem to get it looking quite right.

So I guess what I'm asking here is: What kind of tips and tricks do you guys have for doing basic stuff like this? Is there an easier way of making stairs than using a ton of gradients? How do you guys make beveled stuff that looks half decent? I'm using a texture for the floor, is there a better/more attractive way?