No I did not run it through a plug-in. I did it manually with the pointer. If you find a plug-in that can do it let me know.
You do beautiful work.
I use Paint.NET and there is a built-in plug-in called “Oil Painting” in the effects menu. It has two sliders, one for brush size and one for “coarseness”. It does essentially what you do by hand in less time. That photo would take about a second to do.
All you did was take an AP copyrighted photo and did some smudging and colorization.