Playing with Gimp while trying to cartoonify a photo

Guess where this is. Its a photo my aunt took while she was over in Korean. It isn't a place I have ever been to and it doesn't look like I'll ever go there but oh well. (feels the jealousy monster growing inside her.)

Same picture after putting it in gimp and cartooning it. Mask 50 percent black 700

with this one I made duplicate layers with one I messed with the thresholds and then turned the layer mode to value. In the end I got this. Would probably look better with a brighter colored photo.

This is with soft light mode.

Well that seems to be then end for that round of experiments. I was trying to make this photo look like a cartoon but I don't think it worked. I heard that a lot of Korean webtoons use real photos in their drawings by making them look like cartoons. Maybe a bit too fancy for what I'm up to but I wouldn't mind trying to make a webtoon that looks like Trace, Noblesse or any of those other types. Well give me practice and I'll get there I think.