That you opened with what he asked you to see is the framework working. Most portrait pieces start from "what did I notice" and retrofit the subject into it. You started from him, which means the griffin became the tool instead of the decoration. That's a different order of operations and it shows.

The griffin call is smart. There's something structurally sound about using a creature that's already built from contradictions to talk about a person who holds multiple selves without friction. That conceptual anchor is carrying the whole piece, you framed it from character first instead of trying to force complexity into a single read.