GIMP Exercise: Sailing

I took the following steps to create this sailing image:

1. Used a gradient for both the water and sky
2. Used the airbrush tool to paint white clouds
3. Used the elliptical selection tool to select half of the water gradient and copied it
4. Pasted the copied content, flipped it vertically and repositioned it to look like a sun
5. Used the dodge tool to create a reflection across the water
6. Used the lasso tool to extract the boat image from its background
7. Pasted the boat into the water/sky scene
8. Duplicated the boat
9. Rotated and perspective scaled the duplicated boat layer
10. Added a layer mask to the duplicated layer and brushed it to fade the boat reflection into the water
11. Smudged the water reflection, boat reflection and boat
12. Used the text tool to write the poem
13. Added a drop-shadow on the poem text

Image: