This actually doesn't look bad at all for your first shading attempt. I currently don't have any tutorials to point you to, but here's a bit from my experience about texturing hair and fur.

Here's a picture of my current avatar:



In this, pay attention to how I textured the beard. I am certainly not the greatest pixel artist out there, but I believe I can show you a rough representation of how one should texture hair. Slight variation of the pixels helps to point the direction of the flow of the hair.

However, do not be TOO random in the direction. This was my first try at such a thing:



You can see how messy it is. I put too many colors into the beard, making it look VERY messy.

When you choose a color to work with when making hair, make sure you stay close to that color. If you deviate too much, you'll end up getting something like I got.

Again, this is from an amateur's point of view, so if someone comes around who has more experience, I'm pretty sure you should listen to them more than me. Good luck!