牛
Symbols Animals
bull
ㄋㄧㄡˊ niú
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.
Chinese has one character for cattle regardless of sex, and it reads as stubborn strength and hard work.
Before you commit
Choose with care牛 does not mean bull. It means cattle generally, and most readers picture a working ox pulling a plough rather than a fighting bull. Use 公牛 if the male animal matters.
At small sizes4 strokes. Among the safest characters in the whole set; it stays clean at any size and on any curve.
Cultural noteIn mainland internet slang 很牛 means seriously impressive, shortened from the much cruder 牛屄. It has spread to Taiwanese forums, but readers there still treat it as a borrowed mainland word rather than one of their own.
Meaning
Ox, cow, bull, cattle. No gender or breed distinction.
Four strokes, ancient, and one of the most recognisable characters there is.
Other characters for “bull”
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