lantern

燈

ㄉㄥ dēng

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

Layout

A light in a paper or silk case. The Chinese character covers every lamp there is, from a temple lantern to a headlight.

Before you commit

Choose with care燈 is entirely ordinary in modern Chinese - it is the word on a light switch. If you want the festival object with its red silk and tassels, 燈籠 is what says it.

Cultural noteThe Lantern Festival, 元宵節, closes the new year fifteen days in, with riddles written on the lanterns. Red 燈籠 hang at doorways all through that period.

At small sizesSixteen strokes, fire radical on the left, a stacked right side. The right half clogs when small; give it room.

Meaning

A lamp or light of any kind; a lantern.

One character for candle lanterns, light bulbs and traffic lights alike.

Other characters for “lantern”

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.

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