勤
Symbols Virtues
industriousness
ㄑㄧㄣˊ qín
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.
A habit of hard, sustained work, valued in Chinese life as a plain virtue rather than a heroic one.
Before you commit
Choose with care勤 covers diligence and industriousness alike; Chinese does not separate them the way English does. If you want the working-hands sense specifically, 勤勞 says it and 勤 alone does not.
At small sizesThirteen strokes with a crowded left half. Not a good choice for fingers, wrists or anything under two centimetres.
Cultural note勤 and 儉, hard work and thrift, are traditionally named together as the pair of household virtues. One is often inked or hung with the other.
Meaning
Hardworking; putting in the hours without complaint.
The single character every Chinese reader attaches to hard work.
Other characters for “industriousness”
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