壽
Symbols Life
longevity
ㄕㄡˋ shòu
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 long life. This is one of the most traditional wishes in Chinese, with a character devoted entirely to it.
Before you commit
Choose with care壽 is strongly associated with the elderly. It appears on birthday banners for people over sixty and on funeral goods, so on a young person it can read oddly.
At small sizesFourteen tightly stacked horizontal strokes. It fills in fast when inked small - one of the worst characters for fine detail on skin.
Cultural noteA red 壽 in a roundel is a standard decorative motif on longevity buns and celebration ware. Chinese readers see it as festive rather than personal.
Meaning
Long life, longevity; also age, and birthday in formal use.
The classical longevity character, given at birthdays and funerals of the very old.
Other characters for “longevity”
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