Here's a bit of painterliness from my hols, though again not the kind that people are complaining about, I think

More than one use for a sunset by
David Hallett, on Flickr
As regards sharpening, I usually go with the Detail 100, Amount small, Masking around 40-50 approach in LR, then adjust Radius a little if I'm not satisfied, Make sure you work at 100% in LR, otherwise it won'r render the results accurately.
But lately I've been trying removing all NR and sharpening in LR, and using the Nik tools (now free) after export to Photoshop instead. This also seems to work pretty well (or you can try a High Pass Sharpen, etc.) and the masking is easier if you only want to sharpen part of the image. I'm a Windows user, so have fewer options than some of you, and although I like C1, the difference isn't enough to be worth the money or disruption to me.