effort

努

力

ㄋㄨˇ ㄌㄧˋ nǔ lì

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

Layout

Trying hard at something. Chinese has no single character that stands alone for it, but several that describe different kinds of trying.

Before you commit

Choose with care努 on its own reads as a fragment. If you want one character rather than two, 勤 is the honest choice - it says a person who works hard, which is usually what is meant.

Pairs well with努力 is the plain word. 勤奮 means diligent and driven, and 勤勉 is the steady, unshowy version of the same idea.

At small sizes努力 is around nine strokes plus two. The pairing is uneven but legible small, and 力 is one of the safest characters at any scale.

Meaning

To make an effort, to try hard, to apply yourself.

The word everyone uses. 努 alone is not a standing word today.

Other characters for “effort”

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