Help

I have Painter 8 I think... (it's not on this laptop) Painter is an awesome tool, but so complex! I have still never explored all the brushes and techniques and doubt I ever will... 11 must have even more choice I'd imagine. I think with Painter you need to just experiment with things and the you'll probably end up finding two or three brushes that work well for you. (Or maybe just the one.)

I started out just sticking to the digital airbrush, with detail blender for small areas and soft blender stump for large areas (some people hate using blender brushes but I like them, and the Painter blenders are nicer to use and seem to produce a nicer looking effect than Photoshop ones)

I also like the Chalk Pastel tools (don't really need to use blenders with those) the effects are almost like real pastel. Just use them as you would the real thing. The oil pastels are really nice too, I don't use them but I know a few digital artists who will only use the oilpastels - the effect is smooth but painterly.
When it comes to paint brushes, well the oils and acrylics didn't work for me at all, but I really like the gouache brushes. (Which is weird as in real life I have used oil and acrylic plenty of times, but never tried gouache!)

One tip I do have which has absolutely nothing to do with brushes - When you begin, always make a new layer before painting anything... don't put anything on the canvas layer! Newer versions may be okay, and it would probably be fine if you don't plan on erasing or moving anything, and just working on one layer. But I've always got things messed up by drawing on the canvas - it seems to do weird things to subsequent layers, and if I select and move or erase anything, it goes all strange on me. So yeah, try not to do that

I hope that helps... I probably completely deviated from your question lol