Ah you're too kind! I used to be so bad at backgrounds so i worked on trying to find means of making them better, not being lazy about them etc. One thing i forgot to mention, gaussian blur is really nice for depth, if you soft blur certain areas of the background, really nice effect!
Here's a video made by the talented Yuumei, she explains how she paints backgrounds. There's not much i can replicate, because our styles differ (i use it more as a guideline, not paint over), but it helped me realize that it's ok to use photos as reference!