脈
Symbols Relationships
lineage
ㄇㄞˋ mài
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 line of descent or transmission, from ancestors, or from teacher to student. Chinese pictures it as a continuous vein.
Before you commit
Choose with care脈 first means a blood vessel or a pulse, and second a mountain range. The lineage sense comes from the idiom and is not the reading a viewer meets first.
Pairs well with血脈 for descent by blood, 一脈相承 for an unbroken transmission. Either fixes the meaning that 脈 alone leaves open.
At small sizesTen strokes in a narrow left-right split. Legible small, though the right side can close up on fine lines.
Meaning
A vein or pulse; a continuous line running through.
The character in 一脈相承, passed down in an unbroken line.
Other characters for “lineage”
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