極
Symbols Nature
aurora
光
ㄐㄧˊ ㄍㄨㄤ jí guāng
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 polar lights; Chinese names them the extreme light, with no single character available.
Before you commit
Choose with careNo single character means aurora. 極光 is the real term and cannot be shortened without losing the meaning entirely; for the northern lights specifically people add the character for north in front.
Pairs well with極 alone means extreme or utmost, so the pair reads naturally as the light at the ends of the earth.
At small sizes極光 is thirteen strokes beside six. The first character carries most of the weight, so give it slightly more room.
Meaning
Aurora, the polar lights.
The standard scientific and everyday term, literally polar light.
Other characters for “aurora”
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