蝕
Symbols Nature
eclipse
ㄕˊ shí
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.
An eclipse, described in Chinese as the sun or moon being eaten away.
Before you commit
Choose with care蝕 alone reads as erosion or corrosion, as in rust eating metal or capital being eaten away. Nobody sees an eclipse without a sun or moon beside it.
At small sizesFourteen strokes with an insect radical on the left. It needs space, and the two-character forms need more.
Cultural noteEclipses were traditionally described as a celestial dog devouring the sun, and were read as warnings. The character carries loss, not wonder.
Meaning
To erode or eat away; an eclipse.
The same character used for corrosion and for the moon being consumed.
Other characters for “eclipse”
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