Making photo look like it's painted?

Hello! I am very new to this forum, and I apologize if this question does not belong to this area. If you feel it has nothing to do with this area, direct me where I could find help :-)

I just want to know if there is any way to transform a photo to a "cartoon", make it look like it's painted.

If anyone has played the game "Max Payne" you'll get a good idea what I'm talking about. I don't know if they did that there, but that's the feeling I want to achieve. There is no way I can paint people, so I want to take photos and make them look painted.

Please help :-)

You could try brush strokes>crosshatch and then gaussin blur it.

Try messing around with the contrast, as well.