衡
Symbols Spirit
balance of forces
ㄏㄥˊ héng
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.
Opposing forces held in an even state, with neither one winning. Chinese pictures this as weighing on a beam rather than as a still point.
Before you commit
Choose with care衡 rarely stands alone in modern Chinese. Readers meet it inside 平衡 and 均衡, and as a place and family name, so by itself it looks like half a word.
Pairs well with平衡 for the ordinary sense, 均衡 for a balance that is evenly spread. Both read instantly where 衡 alone makes a reader pause.
At small sizesSixteen strokes in a wide frame with a crowded centre. It needs width; squeezed into a tall space the middle fills in.
Meaning
To weigh; the beam of a balance; equilibrium.
The character inside 平衡 - balance as an act of weighing, not a mood.
Other characters for “balance of forces”
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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