There's nothing I've painted with more frustration and determination than people. Learning anatomy and perspective is vital but there are some tips and tricks that will help you to make a painting more believable in terms of realism. It's often the little details that make all the difference and if you give thought and consideration to everything from colour to texture without leaving anything to chance, you'll probably end up with a better painting by the end of it. In this workshop I'm going to share some of the things I've learned along the way.

Figuring out how to paint skin as best as I possibly could and making clothes look not only real but appealing took me years, but I'll try to explain how I do what I do – and why – so that maybe someone can jump and skip over all those tedious years I had of doing everything the wrong way. Always use a palette of your own in the upper corner of the painting and pick colours continuously from it to keep the painting unified. However, don't be afraid to change your mind halfway through in case you're not enjoying the results – most programs have very simple ways of 'testing' a new colour scheme in a quick way before you set to recolouring everything because you've had a hunch.

Speaking from experience, never make any major changes without first saving the picture in a separate file in case you change your mind again. For this tutorial, I've worked mostly in Photoshop 7 but also in Painter IX.