Welcome to the guild. You have some good stuff going on there. I like the first one for its clarity but I like where the color one is going. Don't give up on the mountains via clouds just yet -- I'll tell ya how I do mine. Clouds, diff clouds, diff clouds, render lighting effects. Grab the Lasso Tool and at the top set the feather to like 50 px. Lasso a nice looking chain and move it into place, the feather prevents it from chopping up with hard edges.

At any rate, it's in my tut so you can read that whenever. Hope we get to see more and have fun.