A standing figure in three-quarter view facing right, the face turned upward at a sharp angle — the most described and most expressive face in the entire new portfolio sequence. The eyes are visible and rendered with the most specificity of any face in the narrow-format works: dark marks for the eyes themselves, a brow line above each, the nose in three-quarter view below, the lips indicated. The head carries a dark-banded headband and a rounded, geometric bob — the hair cut in a smooth dome with the headband making a dark horizontal division across the skull. The body below is drawn with the characteristic black chalk economy, interior hatching marks at the breast, waist, and pelvic region providing tonal anchoring.
The black chalk on the warm aged paper — similar to the ochre-tan ground of Work 1416 but slightly cooler — reads with a stronger tonal contrast than the same chalk on white paper, the warm field making the dark marks more visible. The diagonal cross-hatching at the body's interior is the most sustained interior mark-making in this work, the shadow zones built from multiple passes of parallel lines. The raised face with its sharp upward angle gives the figure a quality of alertness or yearning — the most psychologically specific face since the portrait sketchbook sequence ended at Work 1403.
The upward gaze, appearing here for the first time in the narrow-format portfolio, echoes several of the portrait sketchbook figures that looked sharply upward (Works 1393 [The Upward Alert], 1401 [The Beret, Upward]). In those ink portraits the upward gaze signaled aspiration or alert attention; here, in a full-length standing figure, it reads differently — the body standing at ease while the face alone tips upward, the two gestures in mild contradiction. The body is contained, the gaze reaches. This internal tension gives Work 1420 more psychological complexity than any other figure in the batch.
The bob haircut with headband recurs here after its appearance in Work 1411's back-view figure, but where that drawing was pure contour with no face, this one is the most face-forward of the portfolio. The geometric precision of the bob — rounded dome, clean edges — against the more organic curves of the body below sets up a formal contrast that feels deliberately observed: this is a model whose haircut had a particular shape that Sidney chose to preserve.