A bust-length ink portrait of a man in a collar and tie — the only subject in the entire sketchbook sequence who has dressed formally for whatever occasion Sidney encountered him at. The tie is drawn with particular attention: the knot at the collar, the tie's body descending the center of the chest, the jacket lapels framing it. The formality of the garment gives the portrait a different social register from the t-shirts, open collars, and bare torsos of the surrounding figures.
The face above the tie is in three-quarter view, the gaze directed down and to the left — not direct, slightly private. The brow is heavy, the eye socket shaded, the nose prominent. The expression is that of a man whose attention is elsewhere, perhaps speaking or listening to someone to his left. The short, slightly side-parted hair is drawn with a few parallel marks.
The ink is applied with this series' characteristic decisive line — the outer contour of the face and head clean and unbroken, the interior marks placed with economy. The collar, tie, and jacket are more elaborately described than most of the sketchbook subjects' clothing, the social specificity of formal dress apparently requiring more observed description.
The necktie as a detail indexes the portrait to a particular occasion — a church service, a formal meeting, a professional context — and raises the question Sidney never explicitly answers in these drawings: who are these people? Family, neighbors, strangers on a bus? The tie suggests a someone with a reason to dress.