One of the most restrained and spacious of the creature watercolors — a large horizontal composition in which five or six creatures are distributed across a near-white ground with the wide spacing of a scientific illustration rather than the density of Sea Creatures I or II. The white ground breathes between the creatures; each is given its own territory, its own encounter with the empty paper.
The creatures are among Sidney's most various: at upper left, a large complex form in dark green with blue interior detailing — almost architectural, its segmented structure suggesting an insect seen under magnification; beside it, a smaller purple spiky creature. At center, a yellow-outlined creature with green and red interior marks, its trailing appendages giving it motion. At center lower, a small fish-like form with a purple head and yellow eye, one of the most naturalistically rendered creatures in the collection. At right, a large amorphous green form with a long curved tail.
Between and around these creatures, the ground is not entirely empty: pale lavender and pink washes pool in certain areas, and small scattered marks — red dots, tiny shapes — suggest either the creatures' environment or simply Sidney's inability to leave the white entirely alone. These ghost marks are characteristically placed — never where they would compete with a creature, always in the white spaces.
The title names the compositional logic: sparse. These creatures have space. They are not crowding each other. Each exists in its own portion of the world.