my attempt at making a matte painting...

That looks great! But what you did wasn't a "matte painting." What you did was a "composite." An old-school matte painting is an actual hand-drawn painting on glass that is lined up with a live action camera framed to act (typically) as a set extension to produce an "in-camera" composite.
 
oops. thanks NBC. do they still use old school matte painting any more? i know it would be much easier / cheaper with CG but any upsides to doing a matte?
 
Nice job. Try horizontally flipping the building 180' to better match the direction of the sun on the landscape. :)
 
The house looks way better now (good call Preston). Though I'm not digging the lightning so much. Doesn't look very natural.

Matte paintings on glass aren't really used anymore. Though the term has carried over into the digital age, and people do matte painting in post, for the same reasons that they did them live action.
 
Looks good. I agree on the lightning though.. doesn't look very real. Try using a photo of real lightning, or create some in AE.
 
I don't think it's accurate to say this isn't a matte painting. Sure it is. A lot of the old pros will show you how to do exactly this: adapting existing photos to create a new visual. Most people don't do physical paintings anymore, but some do, and the reason is simple: they are masters of using real media. Most working pros, however, have adopted digital techniques or a mesh of the two.

As for this particular painting, my main gripe with it is the base of the cliff where the water is. The shadows being cast by the cliff are very sharp and the cliff itself is very bright. It seems obvious to me that this part of the image was taken on a sunny day and doesn't match the top half. Nice work on the house, however, which is looking better.
 
It's getting pretty scary now. I'm sure Mr. Hitchcock would have loved you on his staff. Hehe. :engel017:

It would have looked truly awesome if you had merged all these layers in video.
 
When grabbing photos try and find ones with similar light patterns (Sources) and pay attention to scale.

The house is way too big for scale.

( And Black and White is too easy! )
 
I thought the scale was off as well. Scaling within PS is so easy, just play with the element until it looks right.

Also, build a small foreground layer of grass / rock using the closest edge of the bluff in the photo to get your elements. Bring this layer forward of the old house to give it a little more depth.

Adding readable effects to your background plate (read: lightning bolts, defined clouds, birds, airplanes and so forth) makes it unusable in most SFX applications. Obviously, if you're just comping up a concept, then flattening all the elements is the only way to convey what the final will look like.

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i made it black and white because the light in each of athese pictures was very different. i didn't realize i should i have been looking for similar light sources or patters so when i got to the point of putting the two together the oanlay soluation was black and white (actually i desaturated the pictaures which i guess make it black and white).
 
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