精
Symbols Spirit
essence
ㄐㄧㄥ jīng
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.
The concentrated core of something. Chinese has a character for refined essence and another for marrow, and both are used figuratively.
Before you commit
Choose with care精 also means semen in medical and colloquial use, and 妖精 is a demon or a seductress. It is not a neutral character on its own.
Pairs well with精髓 for the essence of something, 精神 for spirit and drive. Either pairing steers away from the awkward solo readings.
At small sizesFourteen strokes across a left-right split, with the rice radical on the left. Detailed but even, so it takes moderate reduction; below roughly three centimetres the stacked right half closes up.
Meaning
Refined essence; concentrated, fine, skilled; vital essence in medicine.
What remains after everything coarse has been taken out.
Other characters for “essence”
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