A full-length standing male nude in pencil, seen from three-quarter back — the figure slightly twisted, the head turned further than the body so the face is barely visible in profile at the upper right. The body is muscular and clearly observed, the back's musculature suggested with confident single lines at the shoulder blade and spine. Blue ink droplets are scattered across the paper — not Sidney's marks but the accidental product of a nearby uncapped pen, the blue spots speckling the cream ground.
The figure occupies the full height of the paper, the proportion of the body carefully maintained from the top of the head to the feet at the lower edge. The hands at the figure's sides are briefly indicated, the fists loosely closed. The feet are drawn with their characteristic toe description even at this scale and format.
The back three-quarter view connects this drawing to the great back-view tradition in the collection — the Back View with Hand (1107), the Quiet Back (1315), the various turned-away figures of the large life-drawing sequence. Here that tradition is applied to the male figure and compressed onto the smaller paper format, the effect more condensed but the formal interest unchanged.
The blue ink droplets scattered across the paper surface are a physical record of the drawing's context — a studio or living room where other materials were present, the hazard of working with multiple tools simultaneously. They do not harm the drawing and give it a specific material character: this paper was in a room where blue ink was being used nearby, on a day when this figure was drawn.