Muzlak,

Well, you’ve done a pretty good job of imitating the Sierra style. I’ve got a few pointers on improving it (as a background, mind you). My advice may make it less Sierra-like. The main thing I dislike about Sierra’s backgrounds (low-res) is that they tend to be very busy, and leave little space for your eye to rest.

I apologize for not drawing pictures to illustrate my points, but my computer is in transit until Monday. If you still have questions by then, I can demonstrate with a few drawings.

-Composition tips

I don’t know whether you drew this from scratch or based it on a real Sierra background, so anything I don’t like about the composition may be Sierra’s fault.

Just my general impression, but it seems like everything is on similar planes. The rock, the tree that bends to the right, and the four bushes looks like they’ve been drawn along a horizontal line. Same thing goes for some of the trees in the background. It would seem more natural if each tree or bush was a different distance from the viewer.

Maybe it’s my personal preference (or my Lucasarts upbringing), but I think you would get a better feeling of depth if the objects farther away had less detail than the close objects. Also, I’m partial to dark foregrounds that “frame” the scene.
If the tree on the far right side were darker, it would fall away from the scene and make it less confusing. You could then balance out the picture with some dark foliage along the lower left hand corner of the screen.

Also, the grass in the distance (on the other side of the path) seems to have the same detail as the grass that’s close to us. Maybe if you drew the blades shorter on the far side (like 1 pixel high instead of two or three pixels), it would seem more distant.

Another very minor thing: the shadow along the underside of the rock (lower left) looks very uniform. From your other shadows, it looks like the sun is coming from the left. If this is so, I’m not sure there would even be a shadow below the rock. Maybe try making the blades of grass overlap the rock a bit (like you’ve done with the tree trunk).

Yes, I’m nitpicky.

-Coloring tips

Here is another area that could use some improvement. I like how you’ve used different colors of green, but the differences are too subtle. The leaves of the foreground tree (far right) seem to mingle with the leaves of the farther away trees.
I think the picture would look much better if the contrast of all the colors was heightened (it would even bring out the shadows along the ground for instance. From those shadows, it looks to be mid or late afternoon, and I think darker shadows would help convey that).

Anyways, I think that covers about everything…
Hope this helps.
Ian