GIMP Exercise: Draw a Simple Tree

To create the tree I created a 600 x 600 image. Then using a brown color I made the trunk of the tree. Then with a black added the shaded side. Branches then were next using a hard edge brush. Leaves were very time consuming. Using a small squared brush I added each leaf. Taking some copied sections of leaves helped a lot but I didn't want my tree to look like it had the same cluster of leaves all over. Then added a drop shadow to the tree.
For the banner I made the foreground to background gradient, then copied several small scale trees over. Adding the text and giving it a newspaper effect.