Welcome to Spine! Sorry if you are a bit disoriented at first. We have our very own Siniša working on a video series that will be perfect for you, as it will start with animation theory and basics and move through how to apply those skills in Spine. Until then we have the Spine Academy and editor documentation pages with links to a number of resources, which you may have already found.
The Spine User Guide explains all the various functionality Spine provides, but it is documentation
it doesn't teach animation theory and isn't written in a tutorial style that builds up skills from scratch. Our new video series aims to fill that gap.
A good way to learn is by getting in there and exploring how things work. For that, the example projects are probably a good place to start. You can poke around in the projects on your own and see how they are built. If that is overwhelming be sure to see our write ups where we dissect the projects and explain each part and how it works. Note some projects are simpler than others.
You said your photo is in one layer? Not sure what you mean? Maybe you posted prematurely?
