律
Symbols Virtues
discipline
ㄌㄩˋ lǜ
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.
Holding yourself to a standard without anyone enforcing it.
Before you commit
Choose with care律 by itself means law or rule. Alone it does not say discipline, and a Chinese reader will see half of a word.
Pairs well with律 plus 己 gives 律己, to hold oneself to a standard. Compact and genuinely literate.
At small sizesNine strokes, well balanced left to right. Safe on a forearm or along a spine.
Meaning
Rule, statute; to regulate oneself.
The character in 自律, self-discipline: a standard you apply to yourself.
Other characters for “discipline”
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