箭
Symbols Protection
arrow
ㄐㄧㄢˋ jiàn
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.
The shot itself. Chinese has two characters for it: the everyday one made of bamboo, and an older, plainer one now more familiar in Japanese.
Before you commit
Choose with care箭 is neutral and concrete. It carries no sense of direction, purpose or aim - the English idea of an arrow pointing the way is not in the character.
Japanese矢 is the Japanese word for arrow (ya) and very common there. If you want the shape read as Japanese, 矢 does it; 箭 will read as Chinese.
At small sizesFifteen strokes under a bamboo top. It needs size. 矢 at five strokes is the choice if the piece has to be small.
Meaning
An arrow; the standard modern word.
Bamboo on top of the character for front - the shaft was bamboo.
Other characters for “arrow”
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.
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