hello.need help desperately 
.am in the prosses of learning blender and i came to the chapter about texturing and UV mapping,so i need good tutorials on gimp for learning the basics and tutorials on making a realistic textured face skin with the mapping from blender so i can proceed with my learning.if anybody out there are kind to help me out,it will be nice. because am addicted to blender.i like it so much.its cool.and am trying my best to learn everything in it and gimp is part of it cuz wanna make realistic characters. i tried searching for tutorials,but there isn’t much out there with blender uv mapping included.
hi
I can say that I’m noob, but I have some idea for you, hope it helps
if you want realistic skin then you can try projection paint or sss (dont even know how to use and havent tried it yet)
about projection (if you use 2.5x version)
I have just tried it today, and it is quite good.
there is also a tut about projection paint for 2.49 in blendercookie, search in june 2009
I dont know if you can uv unwrap. if not then I suggest you to learn it.
Try the blender wiki. I don’t know if there’s anything out there for 2.5 yet though.
Why do you post this question in each section of support forum?
The time for doing that you could spend more efficiently e.g. by making google search engine your friend.
Maybe UV maps and textures work better, but I find materials are perfectly fine for skin. http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Blender_3D:_Noob_to_Pro/Every_Material_Known_to_Man/Human_Skin