Setting Gimp on the throne

[icosahedron]

Not sure if this is in the right section, but I'd like some very, very simple advice please, this is my first day with Gimp and I have no prior drawing experience to speak of.

I thought since I'm playing with the Gimp to see what it does, I might as well practise with something I want, so I had a go at the throne I put in the requests section (I'm still looking for offers btw, I doubt if this will turn out to be any good.)


Since there is no alabaster in the patterns area and I have no idea how to import a texture even if I could find one, I went with default marble.

I started by opening the throne image I'd created in Word Draw. There's no way I could draw a complex assembly of geometric shapes like that in the Gimp yet awhile, then I figured out how to use the lasso select and selected each of the shapes in turn. The fill tool works like MSPaint, so that was no problem, and I got each face of the throne filled with marble texture.

Whilst I had each area selected (cos there's no way I'd be able to accurately re-select it once I'd let go) I put a drop shadow on some of the parts. I know that's probably the wrong technique and I did see something called perspective shadow, but I couldn't make Gimp see what the shape was supposed to be to lay the correct shadow down. The drop shadow seemed to do it sort of nearly right anyway.

Then finally I lassoed the whole shape and put a drop shadow round all of it.

General comments and helpful suggestions for simple improvements please (and how to carry them out) particularly:

Is is possible accurately to re-select something once you've let go of it? How?

How do I darken/lighten selections (eg to make two sides of the plinth shadowy)?

How do I put shadowing on the top of the backrest to make it look like there are points at the two ends and in the middle?

How could I take some text (say in a runic font) and make it appear like it's carved into the arms of the chair? I'll worry about perspective carvings in the backrest later, that's probably a whole lot more difficult.

How do I make it look older?

If these techniques are beyond the novice, just give me a general pointer in the right direction and I'll try to pick it up later.

Thanks.