Update: this question is general, not specific to Sprite Kit or a single language/platform.

I'm toying with Sprite Kit with an idea to make a 2D side-scroller. Now the backgrounds for the maps are going to be hand-drawn and surely bigger than retina display, so the maps could span more than 1 screen in both axis.

I imagine loading such a huge image could mean trouble and I don't plan to use tiling. I'm not sure how Sprite Kit splits images bigger than max texture size, if it does. I could split the images myself and use more sprites for each part of the background.

What is the usual way to handle this?