A large pencil portrait in profile — a woman seen entirely from the left, her face in pure profile, her gaze directed forward and slightly downward. The composition's most distinctive formal element is the hair at the nape: where most of the hair sweeps back and is described in long parallel strokes, the ends at the nape curl inward and downward in a series of tight spiral curls that echo Sidney's most essential formal vocabulary. These curls — each one a small spiral — are the most lovingly described element in the drawing, rendered with multiple overlapping marks that build each coil individually.
The profile itself is handled with characteristic economy: the brow line, the nose, the lips, the chin — each described with minimal marks that nonetheless capture this person's specific features. The eye is suggested rather than described: the lash line and the brow, the socket's shadow, but no pupil or iris.
The ear — visible in profile — is given the full Cothran attention: the outer curve, the inner cartilage folds, the earlobe's gentle weight.
The hair above the profile is drawn in long confident strokes, each one following the hair's natural direction from the crown forward and back. The overall mass is generous, the individual strands described without fussiness.
A small abbreviated signature at lower right. The spiral curls at the nape are the work's most personally Sidney-inflected element — the form that recurs throughout his practice appearing again in observed hair.