Week 3 (Démie)

Hello,
So, for the shadow casting assignment, here's mine:

(For this last one, seeing the one from Chris made me realized where I made most of my mistake).

For the project sketching, just saw we were supposed to do it in B&W and went in full color... but the comprehension of the shadow casting on a imagined scene (when there's no references or when the lighting is in the wrong direction on the references), I kinda... ehhhsh!?

So, my shadows / reflection casting are mostly wrong (mostly on the background / landscape) and I know that's going to be my challenge for this project. So, here... Right when I was painting my object study on week 1, this is the image that came to my mind right away (and I was like "oh shoot, if this was a really production thingy, I would actually have to make other studies for the other bigger griffins"). I've done it very sketchy / quickly, I hope it's still understandable that those are strawberries!? :s

By week 2, my image has involved into this one, changing strawberries for wildberries. I tried to put a long fluffy tail, but it was breaking the composition or the logic of the silent approach of the owl, so I've decided that the tail should be in the direction we can't see in this angle.

On week 3, when the project was going in the direction of shadow casting, I knew that both my 2 ideas where not very inclined to shadow casting on the ground...

So I thought I needed a third sketch, where shadows would be more obvious. My first thought was to place the tiny one on a low branch, above snow and play with shadows on the snow, but right there, crazy like ma-mind is, obviously, I had to go "but what if it was above water, and we would see the reflection of the owl/lynx griffin instead!?" 

For the sketch, I has reused the owl/lynx griffin image, but I do understand that if I was to pick this one, the reflection like this one would be wrong (we should see less of its forehead and more of the throat... like, a reflection is NOT a copy of the image that you flip upside down and stretch into perspective, there's more into it!)

If I was to pick one up, I... don't know which one to pick! D:

My favorite griffin is in the first thumbnail (but maybe I should place the tiny one more on the right side of the frame.
My favorite composition is the second one.

I'm still wondering if the composition for the third one is right; I wonder if I should remove the paws from the upper side and see only the threat from the reflection (so the tiny griffin would be higher inside the framing).