How'd you get the path tapered on one end and broad on the other, Eru?
Through the brush presets and messing around with the brush's fade. For info about that, read the brush settings part of
this tutorial. Getting the right fade and brush width for the different parts of the face took quite a bit of experiementation unfortunately. Sometimes it was frustrating and slow.
Such as, once you've stroked a path, is there any way to edit or change the stroke?
It doesn't look like it. You can transform the path or edit it with the convert point tool, but the stroke will still stay the same. The only way I can figure out how to change a stroke is to undo and try again.
can one apply different fills to the same path? Like say I have a square and I want to fill the top half one way and the bottom half another way?
I don't think so (remember I am a photoshop novice as well!). But I did figure out how to achieve effect.
Draw your square with the pen tool. Fill it the way you want it filled. Then duplicate that layer and use your hue/saturation or color balance settings to get the desired second color. You can then use your rectangular marquee tool to select half of the square. Ctrl + X or edit -> cut to remove half of the square which reveals the first color. Who knows if there is a better quicker way, but that's all that I could figure out. Maybe you could ask at some Photoshop-geared forums.
it won't just let you draw on a damn shape layer.
I'm not sure why you'd need to draw on the shape layer? Why not draw on a new layer. It would achieve the same effect, no? Photoshop is highly complicated. I wish there were some in depth instrustructions or good manuals out there...or that Adobe would provide a good one. I'm tempted to look at Photoshop for dummies but I'm afraid it wouldn't get advanced enough.
I'd be interested to see whatever you're working on.