There are countless ways of painting hair, both traditionally and digitally. The approach you want will be dependant on your style and level of expertise, the genre of the image, your materials, the desired results, and it can vary greatly from one image to the next.

The method detailed in this tutorial is streamlined and arranged to be relatively easy for even a beginner and is intended to produce realism. If a mistake is made on a step, it can most often be corrected by simply deleting that layer and beginning a new one - without adversely affecting the work from previous steps.