A frontal ink portrait of a woman with long straight hair falling from an elevated crown — the hair cascading to both sides of the face and below, the volume of hair filling the upper and side zones of the composition with its mass. The face below is intense and direct: the eyes forward with a slight melancholy or inward quality, the nose and lips specifically drawn, the jaw set. The hair's mass at the crown and the face's direct confrontation together give this portrait a quality that sits somewhere between glamour and psychological depth.
The hair's structure — the elevated crown with a slight wave or lift at the top, then the straight fall to both sides — is drawn with more deliberateness than most hair treatments in the frontal portrait series. Several strokes build the crown's slight volume; the falls to either side are indicated with broad arcing lines. Below the face the chest area receives a few marks suggesting a neckline. This portrait presents more of the body's upper zone than most of the frontal ink busts.
The combination of the long straight hair's glamorous volume and the face's slightly melancholic or inward expression creates an interesting tension — the presentation grand, the interior something quieter. Among the frontal female ink portraits in this series (1472, 1504, 1509, 1511, 1512), this one is the most visually striking: the hair mass at once glamorous and architectural, the face beneath it present but private. The portrait has a quality that might be described as studied rather than caught — the composition deliberate, the image made rather than observed.