想
Symbols Emotions
homesickness
家
ㄒㄧㄤˇ ㄐㄧㄚ xiǎng jiā
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.
Missing home — the everyday version of the feeling rather than the poet's version.
Before you commit
Choose with careThere is no single character for homesick. 想家 is honest and plain but reads casual, close to spoken speech — some find that too light for a tattoo.
Pairs well with思 + 鄉 gives the composed version; 望鄉 (gazing homeward) is the older, more visual phrase.
At small sizes想 is 13 strokes over a 心 base and 家 is 10. Both hold up, though 想 crowds in the middle when small.
Meaning
To miss home.
Exactly what a Chinese speaker says out loud; no literary staging.
Other characters for “homesickness”
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