鵲
Symbols Animals
magpie
ㄑㄩㄝˋ què
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 magpie is the bird of good news in Chinese; its name literally contains the word for joy.
Before you commit
Choose with care鵲 alone is understood but slightly bare. Because the good-news meaning lives in 喜, the two-character 喜鵲 actually says more than the single character does.
At small sizes19 strokes split left and right. Dense; the bird radical on the right will fill in below roughly 4cm.
Cultural noteOn the seventh night of the seventh month, magpies are said to form a bridge so the Weaver Girl and the Cowherd can meet. It is the most romantic image in the Chinese calendar.
Meaning
Magpie. The single character.
Correct and literary; used in set phrases and place names.
Other characters for “magpie”
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