A large watercolor of two elongated standing figures in yellow watercolor and grey-black ink — the most abstract figure work in the large-format series. The figures are quasi-skeletal: the central form a tall, narrow, dark shape that rises from the bottom to the top of the composition, with a rounded head and a complex knot-like mass at the mid-section where the figures seem to intertwine or embrace. At the left a second yellow form stands or leans, and at the upper right another yellow element extends. The yellow watercolor creates a warm glow around the dark central form.
The style here departs entirely from the observational figure drawing tradition — the bodies are not observed but imagined, their forms derived from the medium's behavior rather than from a model. The dark central figure has the quality of a figure remembered or dreamed rather than seen: the elongated proportions, the knot at the middle, the simple rounded head all suggest a figure understood at its most essential rather than described at its most particular.
Among the large-format works, this abstract figure study occupies a position analogous to the small-format teal ground works (1561-1563) and the Abstract Creatures watercolors (1602-1608): a mode of working in which Sidney moves away from direct observation into invention, the figures and forms becoming expressive rather than descriptive. The large format gives the abstract forms the scale of real bodies, the figures life-sized or larger, their presence more physical than the small abstract works.