The first thing I would do, is first imagine in my head how I want it to look. And, if you have an example (like the one in Gemstone IV), then it's even easier. Once you have an idea on how it needs to look, start of with a square image, power of 2 (for the background in your Gemstone example) fill it with the color black, and start of painting with a brush ( grey color, and set to 50 or 75 % transparent) to draw the marble kinda lines. Don't worry if you don't get them perfect immidiatly. There's an undo function in every paint program that I know of.
Use a variety of brush sizes or shapes until you get what you like. The more detailed parts, draw them using a fine brush set to 100 % opaque.
Once you're satisfied, you can add effects to it, and experiment with it just untill you get what you want. And, while experimenting, you'll create all kinds of textures that you can use, so save them. They'll come in handy some day.
Once you've got what you need, make that texture seemless.
And, if you still didn't get the required result, there are lots of free programs that can render wood, metal, stone, etc...
As for drawing for example the shield, try to visualize how you would build that shape with the brushes at hand in your paint program.
I would do it like this:
1) Start of with a big black cirkel brush:
2) With the eraser (or gum) tool/brush (also a circle but smaller), carve out a piece of the big black circle:
3) Again with the eraser tool/brush (but this time set the shape to a square!), carve out another piece, so that you get the shape of a half shield:
4) Now, with the wandtool (or the magic wand), select the inner color (here it is black) so that you select the whole shape. Once selected, align the shape with the help of the raster. Then, with the shape still selected, copy/paste it, and mirror the newly paste copie:
5) Then, align the other shape too, to make the final shape of the shield, then deselect all, and once more with the wand tool, select the color black in order to select the final shield.
6) Once that is done, fill the complete shield shape with red (or any other color that you like), and apply an inner bevel on it (if your paint program has that feature). If not, experiment with all the filters/effects that your paint program has, untill you're satisfied with the result.
You can apply as many effects as you like, just untill you get the required result.
and here's the final result:
Hope you like this little tutorial, and I hope it helps you making other great images.
And, I hope that my explanation is clearly?
Cheers
Slayer rules!!! Yeaaah, man!
