愧
Symbols Emotions
guilt
ㄎㄨㄟˋ kuì
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 inward sense of having done wrong — conscience, not a verdict from a court.
Before you commit
Choose with careDo not reach for 罪 — it means crime or sin and reads as a legal or religious judgement, not private guilt.
Pairs well with愧 + 疚 gives 愧疚, guilt-ridden, which no reader can mistake for anything else.
At small sizes疚 is only 8 strokes and stays clean; 愧 at 13 is still comfortable at small scale.
Meaning
Ashamed; conscience-stricken before others.
The private feeling of having fallen short of what you owed.
Other characters for “guilt”
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