No point in being original about the title eh.

Hey, I'm imahilus. At the moment the only other forum I frequent is hirstarts(.com). In fact, a map by one of the members there made me take a look here.. and I saw a tutorial that looked like even I could follow.
I'm a coder by nature, and have tried drawing stuff before with absolutely no succes whatsoever.
That said, I run linux.. gimp came pre-installed with ubuntu, so figured I'd give it a go with this tutorial:
http://www.cartographersguild.com/showthread.php?t=1142
Suprisingly enough, I've come to the point where I have some kind of island, with an interesting coastline... with my non-existing artistic talent.. I'm bloody impressed!
Sorry for the swearing, I'm that impressed.

Might aswell use this post for a second purpose, to not clutter up this forum =)
I'm sort of stuck.. Somehow I managed to get the mountains in, but I'm stumbling and staggering at the forest part. For some reason my 3-part-sandwich-layers darken up the entire map. Nor do I have a clue what colours to pick for the colour gradient for the forest.
So I'm sure I'm doing something wrong, I just haven't a clue what.

In anycase, it is fun seeing a friendly society in this sort of realm aswell. I always love the maps that are in books like lord of the rings, or the maps that come with games.
And who knows, I might be able to make a fancy map myself at the end of this summer!