友
Symbols Relationships
friend
ㄧㄡˇ yǒu
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.
Someone you like and trust and are not related to. The single character is real but rarely stands alone in modern writing.
Before you commit
Choose with care友 is understood at once, but in modern Chinese it lives inside compounds. Standing alone it reads as a written or classical word rather than a natural one.
JapaneseShared with Japanese, read tomo, where 友 alone is a normal word for friend. A Japanese reader will find it more natural standing alone than a Chinese reader will.
At small sizesFour strokes with two long diagonals. Very robust small, and the diagonals suit a forearm or a wrist.
Meaning
Friend; friendly; to be on good terms.
The root character in every word about friendship, and clearly read.
Other characters for “friend”
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