Changing the color of the Pencil tool

Foreground and Background Colors:

At the bottom of the toolbox you see a black and white square. Those are your foreground and background colors. To change them, just click on the square. Also have a look at some Gimp tutorials, as there is certainly plenty of other stuff left to learn:

• http://www.gimp.org/tutorials/

First make sure you set Image/Mode/RGB

Then click on the black/white squares thing.

Click on the corner black for your tool, it represents the 'top' or 'foreground'.