McCance was one of the very few Scottish artists in the 1920s and 1930s to respond positively to modernist art. He got to know Wyndham Lewis and other members of the former Vorticist group in London. He was decisively influenced by their machine aesthetic and openness to technological progress. This drawing – possibly a preparatory study for a sculpture – treats the human head in terms of finely polished machine parts, although there is also perhaps a nod towards monolithic sculpture from the Pre-Columbian era (pre-1492).