A self-portrait in blue ballpoint ink — Sidney at the mirror, studying his own face with the same unsentimental directness he brought to every other subject. The face is broad, the gaze level and clear, a mustache above the upper lip and the beginning of a goatee or chin beard below it. The eyes are wide and fully open, their pupils drawn as solid blue circles, the gaze carrying the particular attentiveness of a man who has been looking at himself long enough to see clearly.
The blue ballpoint is a departure from the black ink of the other portrait studies in this sequence — a different tool, a different situation. Ballpoint ink has its own qualities: a finer, more consistent line than a brush or dip pen, the marks slightly waxy, building up in areas of density without the pooling of wet ink. Sidney uses it with full confidence, the outer contour of the head clean and unbroken, the interior marks — brow, eyes, nose, mustache, collar — placed with precision.
The collared shirt is drawn with particular specificity: the collar points, the shirt placket, the visible stripe of a t-shirt or undershirt at the neck, a button at the center. These domestic details ground the portrait in the ordinary — a man at home with a pen, drawing himself in a moment of private attention.
This is the collection's fifth confirmed self-portrait (joining 523 in ink, 527 in pencil, 648 in color, and 1344 in black ink). Each finds Sidney in a different medium and likely a different decade. The blue ballpoint version is the most intimate in format — small scale, everyday materials, the self-regard of a Tuesday afternoon rather than a formal artistic exercise.