Help with these two graphics?, They're backgrounds, I guess... Options

[achimongus]

I sent in the castle one but it got rejected, which is completely fine, I would just like to know how to improve. What am I doing wrong? The second one I know most people will think it does not have enough color, but personally I love just two simple colors together. C=

(I wasn't sure how to put these huge pictures on here, so I used Imageshack's thumbnail option....I hope that's alright....)

[venti-anemoi]

For the castle one, the boardwalk looks like it's leading.... kind of to the right of the castle, not directly to it? I guess that's the perspective/proportion thing. I don't really like the yellow stain (?) brushes on top of everything; to me, it doesn't fit with the rest of the wallpaper.

A really easy way to make the bottom right part seem not so empty would be to add text (maybe something in black on a soft light layer, if you're using photoshop?). Or, since you have birds in the upper right area, you could add ducks or something in the bottom right area. But you don't want to completely fill up the that area, because people still want space to put their icons and everything. I like the birds, by the way. :D

In the second wallpaper, the pattern really stands out. It looks pretty sharp. I dunno if that's just my computer screen, because it tends to do weird things to colors and sharpness, but I would suggest maybe lowering the opacity of the pattern? Your focus isn't on the pattern, but on the two people, so following that, maybe you could also lighten the other stuff (the rose and such), or partly desaturate it. Just some ideas.