徒
Symbols Relationships
apprentice
ㄊㄨˊ tú
Two versions of the same picture, and both are free with no account and no watermark. The first has no background at all, which is the one to send your artist — but a phone or computer photo viewer set to dark will show black strokes on dark grey and it can look like nothing downloaded. If that happens, use the second one: identical characters on a plain white background. Either way you get the characters on their own — the square and the faint guide lines you see above are not in the file. Each character is 1000px, so a two-character download is 2000×1000, and the script and layout are the ones you picked.
Script
Characters
Same in both
Layout
Rubbing mode: white on black, as a stone rubbing. The download is unaffected.
Someone learning a trade under a master. The character is real and old, but it keeps bad company in modern words.
Before you commit
Choose with care徒 alone also means merely or in vain, and it sits inside a run of words for bad actors: 匪徒 bandit, 暴徒 thug, 賭徒 gambler. Standing alone it can read that way first.
Pairs well with師徒, master and apprentice, names the relationship cleanly and removes every unwanted reading of 徒.
At small sizesTen strokes, left-right and evenly weighted. Behaves well small and on curved skin.
Meaning
Apprentice, disciple, follower.
The traditional half of the master-and-apprentice pair 師徒.
Other characters for “apprentice”
What to do next
Pick the script and layout you want above, download the PNG, and send that file to your artist. Ask them to work from the file rather than redrawing the character freehand — that is where strokes go missing.
Related concepts