resources on creating images for use with glDrawPixels

Hallo – I’m trying to write a graphical interface for a little alife program with OpenGL (in Ruby, as it happens, but that’s not the issue.)
I need to create a series of bitmaps (or images, in the red book’s parlance) to represent creatures that I can move around.
As you’ve probably guessed, I’m reading the red book, but I haven’t really understood the chapter on images sufficiently to put it to use, so was wondering if anyone could point me towards any resources that explain how to create and use images, but for simple people?
Cheers,
Doug.

OpenGL does not help you with this, you have to load the images into memory yourself, and tell OpenGL in what format they are in the buffer when you use them.

I suggest you have a peek on the texture tutorials on the NeHe website, this shows how to get the images to OpenGL.

http://nehe.gamedev.net/