First, you have to learn Drawing. You'll not be able to do something nice before it. Some mappers do cnp but if you dont have some graphic abilities, it will result a bad job. Second, you have to take time to do it. How much did you take for this one ? 15mn in photoshop ( i dont talk about import, cut, saving etc )? All good works take a lot of time. My custom console is the second version and take more than 6 hours to do it. There is no secret.
Photoshop or an good other image editor...it's not important. If you don't have anything to edit image very well, you have to condiser "found and install photoshop" as your first step before what you can't start anything.
Sure... but an artist starts to learn drawing by get a pencil. So the Step 0 of skinning is get a good tool. Step 1, learn drawing and graphic technics. Step 2 ... you'll see after Step 0 and 1.
But an artist starts to learn drawing by get a pencil
It is much easier to draw with a pencil than with mouse.
Tablet or not, all real artists start by the drawing with the pencil and paper and scan it to color it. It's possible to have a real perspective/proportion vision with a tablet.