u/Downtown_Pattern4313

I’m doing self study to improve my art, hopefully to a point where it can get me into a career. It’s going really well so far and I’ve set out a plan on what I’m going to study and when I will study it. But recently I’ve noticed a problem that my backgrounds look absolutely horrendous. For example, I was doing sand dunes as a background and the surface that my character was standing on but I had no idea where to start in making it look even remotely like sand . I’ve hit a roadblock now because I’m unsure what I can study to help me fix this problem, would it be rendering?