孤
Symbols Emotions
loneliness
ㄍㄨ gū
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.
The ache of being cut off from other people — alone, and not by choice.
Before you commit
Choose with care孤 tends to read as pitiable — orphaned, abandoned, left behind. If you mean chosen solitude, 獨 is the better character.
Pairs well with孤 + 獨 gives 孤獨, which reads instantly. 孤高 (aloof and lofty) is the admiring version.
At small sizes8 strokes with clear space in the middle. One of the safer choices for small or curved placement.
Meaning
Alone, isolated, without family.
Originally an orphan; it still carries being left rather than choosing to be apart.
Other characters for “loneliness”
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