Here are the results of an idea acquired from discussions on the linux-kernel mailing list, and an initial suggestion by Alan Cox.
Feel free to do whatever you see fit with the images, you are encouraged to integrate them into other designs that fit your need. Comments suggestions are also welcome, so please tell me what you think of these. I suggest that you look at some of the other images available with integrated text.
The backgrounds of these images are random colors (if your viewer doesn't support transparent gifs). This is because I want to be able to keep the outline clean (except when blending into a scene or title bar). Each in-line image is now also a link to the corresponding gif so that they are more easily retrieved. The images I actually work from are tifs which I'll make available if there is interest.
Neal Tucker was kind enough to provide a scalable vector based postscript version of the black and white penguin.
Permission to use and/or modify this image is granted provided you acknowledge me lewing@isc.tamu.edu and The GIMP if someone asks.
I've moved the other older versions to a different page to keep from cluttering this one up. I am also slowly working on a few ideas for integrating text etc. as I probably already mentioned.
I've also written a very rough description of how I drew the penguins. It is intended to help anyone interested in using the GIMP as a drawing tool.