I really need to beef up my photoshop painting skills.

In the past i've mostly drawn sketchy pencil illustrations, and used a bit of watercolour. All on paper. I rarely used PS except for small adjustments on scanned drawings. But I never really branched into painting. And I don't even mean the elaborate, super-rendered digital paintings. I'm interested in a more illustrative look.

Anyone got tips on how to self-teach? I'm probably going to spend some time messing around with all the brushes, to get a feel for what they do, then try to copy digital artwork I like, to see if I can replicate the techniques.

But obviously some tutorials would help.

And I like Kyle Webster's brushes so far. Is there anything better out there in terms of Photoshop brush add-ons?

Any advice at all would be cool. thx bbs