I've been gone a while b/c of school and Gears of War , but also been really busy in Photoshop, and I've finally finished my first painting image (practiced on parts of others, it's my first whole image). I selected the image, put lots of layers over it, and used a brush to brush in color on different layers that corresponded with the original image. Then, after a lot of extra detail-brushing and merging of layers, color/levels adjusting, etc., on a diff. layer, and I used a lot of smudging to make it look like brush strokes. I also smudged in some white in the hair and some other places to give it more detail. I don't remember how many hours this whole thing took me, but it was close to forever . I spent a lot of time getting details in, and then I added a canvas texture once I was done. I did this without a tablet (don't have one yet, but I'm getting one for Christmas) so that would have helped immensely. Here's the painting:
Original

And the black art thing was easy. I duplicated the original twice, then deleted the original layer. On the first duplicated layer, I applied my own filter, and on the layer above it, I changed the mode to Color.
Black art:

Original