A bust-length ink portrait of a woman in three-quarter view, the face broad and round, the eyes wide and forward-looking — not quite direct gaze but very nearly, the eyes just slightly off-center from the viewer's own. The hair surrounds the face in a loose cloud, the ink marks following individual strands and waves outward from the crown, the whole volume of hair giving the face its framing mass.
The eyes are the portrait's dominant feature — wide, slightly anxious or attentive, the irises drawn as full circles with small marks at the pupils. The eyebrows above them are emphatic, the shadow at the outer eye corners building the orbital depth. The nose and lips below are more briefly handled, the face's emotional weight concentrated entirely in the upper half.
The shadow at the cheek and nose is built with dense hatching that gives this face more tonal complexity than most of the sketchbook portraits. The chin below carries a dimple or shadow mark, and the neck transitions into a garment that is barely suggested — a neckline and some horizontal marks indicating fabric texture.
In the sketchbook sequence, wide eyes that verge on direct gaze but don't quite arrive there create a specific unresolved tension — the feeling of a face that is watching but hasn't decided whether to engage. This portrait sits at that threshold, the eyes drawn large enough to command attention without quite making the commitment of full contact.