無
Symbols Life
impermanence
常
ㄨˊ ㄔㄤˊ wú cháng
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.
Nothing stays as it is. Chinese has the Buddhist term ready-made, and it is used well outside temples.
Before you commit
Choose with careIn everyday Chinese 無常 also means erratic or fickle, as in 反覆無常. Outside a Buddhist context a reader may well take it that way.
Cultural note黑白無常 are the two spirits who escort the dead in folk belief, so 無常 carries a death association many Chinese readers feel at once.
At small sizesTwenty-three strokes over two dense characters. 無 turns into a solid block when inked small, so this needs real size.
Meaning
Impermanence; nothing lasting. Also erratic, unpredictable.
The Buddhist term for anicca, and a phrase every reader knows.
Other characters for “impermanence”
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