A three-quarter profile figure in black chalk with the most unusual pose in the batch and one of the most structurally complex in the narrow-format portfolio: the model stands on the right leg while the left leg is raised, bent at the knee, with both hands gripping the lower left shin — the body balanced on one foot, the raised knee and hands forming a triangular mass at the composition's center. The face turns to the right in three-quarter view, the head rounded with close-cropped hair, the face indicated but not elaborated. The standing right leg below drops straight to the foot at the composition's bottom, the full-length balance on one leg achieved with apparent ease.
The black chalk is applied with the most complex line arrangement in the batch: the raised knee and gripping hands create a zone of interlocking forms — the shin's diagonal, the two hands wrapped around it, the knee angle above — that required multiple lines and several corrections. This is not the single-pass contour of the spare works but a zone of observed complexity, the interlocking geometries of hands on leg rendered with care. The standing leg below is drawn with a single confident outer contour, the simplicity contrasting with the upper zone's density.
The leg-grip pose is the only one-legged stance in the entire narrow-format portfolio and one of very few in the collection as a whole. It requires not only balance from the model but a different kind of compositional thinking from the artist: the body's normal bilateral symmetry is broken, the weight entirely on one side, the free leg creating a diagonal that crosses the composition's vertical axis. The hands gripping the shin are drawn with the specificity Sidney brings to all hands — the fingers individually indicated, the grip's pressure visible in how the fingers wrap.
Work 1423 is missing from the project files, meaning 1424 follows 1422 in the available sequence without its neighbor. Whatever 1423 contained, this figure stands as the most structurally inventive pose in the 9.5"×25" black chalk group — the balanced one-legged stance, the interlocking hands and shin, the triangular mass at center. It echoes the collection's dancer figures (Works 840, 870) in its interest in the body balanced and suspended, though here the balance is static rather than in motion.