You had a very nice concept for this photograph.. showing dry branches against a background of dark clouds would form an interesting composition.
Compositionally, I would like to see more of the branches, and slightly brighter. It could help to use the flash to lighten up the foreground a bit.
It appears the sky is too dark, which might be due to trying to make the clouds look better. Playing with blue saturation in post processsing could have helped here.
Ponderous and heavy ... I do like this. It really transfers a feeling to the viewer, not just an image. It is almost as if a face were looking down from the cloud.
Very witty, I like it. The composition would have been better balanced into thirds by cropping about 1/2 the cloud from the top. It's taking too much attention from the braches imo.
I like the composition of this. It's nicely laid out. On the down side, the sky is very over-exposed. For a shot like this, metering on the sky only might have helped or a grad neutral density filter to help manage the dynamic range of the photo.