灰
Symbols Nature
ash
ㄏㄨㄟ huī
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.
What is left when fire is finished; in Chinese the same character also simply means grey.
Before you commit
Choose with careIn daily use 灰 mostly means grey, as in 灰色. For the residue of fire specifically, 燼 or 灰燼 is far sharper.
At small sizesSix strokes, fire under a sloping top. One of the lighter fire characters and safe small.
Cultural note心灰意冷, heart turned to ash and will gone cold, is the standard phrase for being thoroughly discouraged. A lone 灰 can carry that flatness.
Meaning
Ash; also the colour grey, and discouraged in 心灰.
The common character, though grey is now its most frequent reading.
Other characters for “ash”
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