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gonk After being impatient and learning and I am unable to draw backgrounds in photoshop without making them look like doodle s**t, I think I am going to return to drawing backgrounds with paper and pencil. crying Anyone else have background difficulties? Anything in general about it?

Drawing a backround into your art is taking the leap from simple illustrations to an actual artistic composition. You know all that wierd s**t about Value and Lien your art teacher is always spurting? Well it's going to slap you hard now if you don't use it.
The backround should speak about the charecter pictured; doing a little research on other paintings shows that nothing in a backround was just put in for no reason; everything has a reason, be it narrative or visual manipulative.
The best tip I can give is to draw the whole drawing at the same time; don't draw either the backround or the person first. Start with blocky shapes of the whole deal and work the whole drawing up from there. It really helps keep the person a part of their backround.