I tried painting/drawing in Gimp but since I never could make anything decent other than electronic schematics,I gave up.
I have started to make the computer do it for me.
Here's what I came up with:

This was made with mandelbulber-1.15.
I originally started with this one:

I turned it 90 degree's clockwise and after saving it I started playing with the controls which resulted in the first one.

These fractals are rendered according to what's in a .fract text file that you feed it.
There's docs on mandelbulber but so far I haven't found any howto about syntax etc for writing your own.
Gerard.

These are both very cool Gerard. My fave is the top one, although the bottom one shows 3-D with my eyes and it jumps right out at me.

Thanks molly.
This program is 3D.
The yellow in the second one is called "inner glow".
Why it more or less disappeared in the first one I don't know.

I intend to write .fract files myself by just hit and miss based on what's in them.
Gerard.

Edit:Just realised I am in the wrong section.Sorry.
This is not made in Gimp,should have gone into other graphic programs.