Background practice

Hi guys, this is mostly Art Lozzi studies that I did in photoshop. I've been trying to develop an eye for color and composition. I'm also learning where and when to use details. I've also been learning what photoshop brushes to use to recreate a nice organic look the best as possible. One of the things that have been working for me is that I read in one of the Art Lozzi posts that there should be the base bg color visible through all of the other elements on top of it, so I have been creating texture by erasing instead of adding color and it makes it much more natural looking to me.

For the color I've been using the eyedropper tool on the originals, but I'll make a guess as to what color it's going to be beforehand, and then I also write down on a paper what colors were used in each bg.

The plan is to do as many of these as humanly possible or at least until I can gain a full understanding of how to do backgrounds really good.

also here is a link to my practice blog with all of my other lesson stuff in it. I guess I'll probably start posting some on here now too. I just didn't want to take up a whole bunch of space on here.