A frontal portrait with the face tilted forward and slightly downward — the eyes looking down from beneath the brow, the overall expression one of absorbed attention or private thought. The hair, swept upward and forward in a large mass, is rendered with Sidney's most energetic hair marks: multiple overlapping curves building the volume from different directions, the mass clearly real and clearly heavy.
The pencil work throughout is light but specific — the tonal buildup at the eye sockets and along the nose giving the face its three-dimensionality, the shadow under the lip adding the final facial volume. The lips themselves are the most carefully rendered element: each individually described, slightly parted, the detail of their meeting point given particular attention.
The composition centers the face generously in the picture field — the hair mass fills the upper zone, the neck and shoulder are suggested below, the sides of the paper are free. The centered face-as-subject is one of Sidney's most repeated portrait formats, and this version achieves a quality of stillness and inwardness.
The downward orientation of the face gives the portrait a quality of self-absorption that contrasts with the more direct gazes of other portraits. This person is not looking at the artist and is not performing for the drawing. They are simply present, in their own thought.