悲
Symbols Emotions
grief
ㄅㄟ bēi
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 heavy sorrow that follows a death or a permanent loss, rather than ordinary unhappiness.
Before you commit
Choose with care悲 spans grief and Buddhist compassion. On its own it can read as simply sad rather than bereaved; 悲傷 or 哀 is more specific.
JapaneseSame glyph in Japanese, read kanashii, with the same sense. A Japanese reader will take it as their own word first.
At small sizes12 strokes, weighted at the top over a 心 base. It holds up well when reduced; below roughly two centimetres the heart closes up.
Meaning
Sorrow, grief, deep sadness.
The standard written character for grief; also the second half of 慈悲, Buddhist compassion.
Other characters for “grief”
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