credits:

https://pixabay.com/users/artbycharlotte-6591713/

https://pixabay.com/users/alektas-19398239/

https://pixabay.com/users/ragnahellberg-10629980/

https://unsplash.com/@johnnyabroad

https://unsplash.com/@jonnymckenna

https://unsplash.com/@adinc

Hi all! :3 I would love some feedback on my first manip. My background is mostly in regular ol digital illustration, so this was a new medium for me!

Also, any advice or something I should know about graphic making or selling graphics on-site would be very appreciated! I am new here and only just figured out how to board my animals so D: looking for any and all info on how the site runs and how graphics are done here! Thank you in advance c:

First off, way to go matching the tones of the dogs and the background images! This cannot be stressed enough IMO, when things don't match it sticks out like a big red flag. You don't want a dog that is showing a ton of blue/green cool tones on a background that is warm. I've had to learn over the years that matching the lighting of the background to the subject is also so important and if you don't spend the time doing it, the image never turns out as good as you want. Your dogs look really good! One thing to work on would be adjusting the shadows to match the background a little better. Mostly the middle dog has some shadows on his face that are much more faded out than the rest. Not all manips need such hard shadows but in this case, I think it would just fit better. There isn't a super bright light source so it doens't look out of place that you don't have a ton of hightlighted areas on the dogs but subtle highlights are a nice way to add more realism and depth to a manip.

The dog fur tuffs after cutting out them out also has some nice texture to help it look more natural on a new background. I can see some spots where the dog on the right wasn't cut out as well like around the head/ears. Spending time on cutting things out super well was one of the things I remember everyone talking about when I was learning and it's stuck. Having some dark lines from the original background breaks the illusion so cleaning that up would help resolve that.

The layout of the image was done well too! My only suggestion would be to make the running dogs a little smaller to force them deeper into the image. It would just had more depth and IMO be more interesting visually. 

Other little things to work towards could be painting the pupil/iris, especially on the closest dog, in addition to the little light flare you already added. There used to be tons of tutorials on dA, it may just take some digging to find one that helps you. And the last thing, instead of fading the running dogs' feet with the background use some harsher eraser brushes where the grass would infront of the feet. 

Overall you've put  a ton of good work into this image!