Leah's sunset painting

 Here is Leah's beautiful, colorful sunset painting. I really like the warm payoff at the heart of the painting.

I only have a few suggestions of how to feature this a little more.

 Here is Leah's lovely photo.

A few quick notes in Photoshop:

1. Consider trimming some of the branches on the left to allow more of the lighter sky come through to the left edge of the painting. Set up a light/dark hierarchy in which the darker land and trees are darker than even the darkest of the sky. In some cases that will mean lightening the sky and in the tree it means making those values darker.
2. I gradated the sky, making the top darker and adding a broken, light blue/purple color.
3. Though it's roughly done here, look to get the character and direction of the clouds. In the photo you can see that— 4. the clouds are lit warm from below and the tops of them have a greyish blue light influence.
5. The mountains are slightly lighter and more directly influenced by the warm colors of the sun in the center of the shape. They're a little cooler towards the edges.

A general note, We all must be aware when we change the formats of the images we're working on from the photo reference we're using. The shapes will change if we try to fit everything in. Nn this case, the photo is a more horizontal format, consequently, the shape of the warm sunset colors has gotten taller. In this case that is not a detrimental issue but be aware of this in any piece you're working on. If I'm not just winging a painting for fun and reconstructing it on the fly, I'll make sure that my reference photo and my canvas are the same ratio. It makes it easier to be efficient and allows me to put more attention on other painting issues.

Leah can enhance this painting with just a few things to bolster what she has already. Nice job.