A frontal ink portrait in the small 8.25 by 11 format — the face framed by a mass of curly or wavy hair drawn with the most energetic, gestural marks in the small-format portrait series. The hair tumbles and swoops at both sides of the face and above, the individual curls and waves suggested by overlapping arcs and loops, the whole mass having a quality of movement and life. The face below is specific: the eyes with their iris circles and lash marks, the nose in three-quarter, the lips, the chin — all described with the bold ink line of the large-format portrait tradition but compressed into the smaller format.
The contrast between the hair's wild energy and the face's specific observation is the drawing's primary quality: the face is drawn with care, the hair with abandon, and the two registers coexist without conflict. This echoes Work 1429's wild mane in the figure drawings, where the hair's gestural excess was the composition's primary energy, but here the face is more fully described, the two zones in more even competition for the viewer's attention.
The small format — 8.25 by 11 — makes the energetic hair marks particularly bold relative to the composition: where in the large 14 by 17 portraits the hair might occupy a quarter of the sheet, here it occupies more than half, the curls pushing to all four edges of the small paper. The compression of so much energy into the small format gives the portrait an almost explosive quality. Among the small-format ink portraits, this one has the most visual energy per square inch.