戀
Symbols Emotions
longing for love
ㄌㄧㄢˋ liàn
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 wanting someone who is not there — missing a person more than wanting romance in general.
Before you commit
Choose with care戀 alone leans towards attachment and being in love, and in some compounds towards being unable to let go. The specific ache of missing someone is 相思.
At small sizes戀 is 23 strokes and top-heavy. It goes to a smudge when small, so it needs generous size.
Cultural noteThe red bean is the token of 相思, from a famous Wang Wei quatrain. Chinese readers make that link instantly, so a red bean motif carries the meaning without any text.
Meaning
Romantic attachment; to be in love with and unable to let go.
The character of clinging affection, at the root of 戀愛 and 留戀.
Other characters for “longing for love”
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