Jesse L Martin tutorial

Difficulty: Fairly easy.
Hardest part for me was not drooling on the keyboard (mmm, Jesse L Martin) ;) (ETA: The hardest part was not beating lj bloody for messing up my coding 87 times!!!!)
Ahem.

Uses GIMP 2.4.5
Should be translatable. This is my first ever tutorial. I’ve only been using GIMP a short time, but I was really pleased with the results, so



Just so this is really noob-friendly, I’ll add this: Make sure that you add all your brushes before you begin. They go into gimp->brushes before you even open up the program.

Ok, so here goes: Start a new file that is 500x250.
Open your base. I used this
Crop it down as you choose, then paste it into your file. Mine wound up like this. And yeah, that’s a little smaller than 500x250. Sue me ;)

Now here’s where I started messing around. Click Colors->Colorize and start messing with the color. I ended up with this .

Ok, now duplicate your layer. go to Layer->Scale Layer and scale it to 300x150. Using the move tool, move it up into the upper left hand corner. Go to Layer-> Anchor layer to set it in place.(this part always confuses me).

Ok, texture time. I used this one by lellie_mo
Using the rectangular select tool, select part of the texture which you’d like to use. Make a new layer, and copy and paste that into your base. Set it to hard light. Move it around a bit before you anchor it, if you choose. Make a new layer and title it “opaque brushes.”
Now it’s time for the text. I used tiny text brushes by [Bad username: “colorfilter”] that can be found here

Other brushes I used were:
“Every Time We Touch,” by dbzmerciter2005.
Doodle brushes by cabrioles

Ok, now for a little more texture. This step is optional if you like.

I made another new layer called “blended brushes,” and set it to soft light. Then I used various and sundry grungy brushes like:
“Grunge Brushes” by d00bie. (I loooove these!!)
Ink spill and splatter by inobscuro.
Bloodworking. I have no clue who made these since I believe someone gave them to me as part of a set and I can‘t find them credited anywhere, but after an hour-long search, I can at least find where to download them. If anyone knows their proper credit, please comment.

This layer, set to normal blend mode, looks like this,

Anyway, there you have it. My very first tutorial. I am sooo proud!</lj>
(made for T, a member at my RPG who is just learning GIMP.)