GIMP Brushes Question

[jazzon]

I am trying my hand at making some mountain brushes for gimp. My goal is a generally right hand shaded/steep set of mountains (large variety desired for a major overland work) with a shallower unshaded side to the left. I can get the left to look good, but can't seem to get the right side to shade. By shade I do not mean fully tinted, I mean shadding lines or crosshatching. The problem is the tend to form what looks like pyramidal steps. If I use blurring or transparency to achieve the effect I want, it renders as a solid color after I save it as a brush. I've tried drawing them on every possible type of layer, but the right just wont turn out.

I seem to be at an impasse with this. The attached image is the mountain base form I am working with. This one gives a good outline shape, but once I add several 1px wide shadow lines they either show up as pyramid style stairs, or fully shaded. The sample shows blurr effects, and the "stair step" effect I am talking about. The effect I want is a hand drawn shading of the darker side.

I'm not sure if I am up against a software limitation or what. I am fairly new to the advanced features of gimp, and have never tried my hand at brushes before.

The zip file includes the gimp xcf file that includes some layers showing various hatch stiles I have tried.

I can't seem to get it to shadow right. It is either fully opaque, or fully transparent. If anyne knows of a good tut covering this, or could offer some advice, I would appreciate it.

osampleMountain.pngsampleMountain.zip