Artistic Painting

To start off, open an image you want to turn into an "artistic" piece of art. I'm using the image you see on the left, if you want to follow the tutorial, you can download this image here

First thing you need to do is create a new layer, so simply go to Layer->New->Layer. Click OK on the dialog box and you should have a new layer.

Set your foreground color to white (press D to reset the color palettes, then press X to set foreground to white)

Now use the Paint Bucket tool to fill the new layer with white.

Now open your "History" palette. If its not open, go to Windows->History

If you followed the tutorial correctly, you should now have the same history as mine to the left.

Next, click on the empty box to the left of the "Open" item on the history palette to mark the history brush.

Then in the Toolbox, select and hold down the History Brush, then select "Art History Brush"

At the top you will see a toolbar for the history brush. This is where you can set different variables for the brush, so select the brush size and style you want to use (experiment is the key here).

Click to enlarge

Then simply use the brush and paint on top of the white layer. You will see that the brush will start painting the image of the original layer, in an artistic style. Base on my settings above, this is what I'm getting as I paint

After you've painted the whole image, go to Filter->Sharpen->Unsharp Mask, and enter the following settings:

Amount: 200%
Radius: 2px
Threshold: 10

So we've turned

This

into this...