導
Symbols Relationships
mentor
師
ㄉㄠˇ ㄕ dǎo shī
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 teacher who guides you rather than instructs you. Chinese marks this with the idea of leading the way.
Before you commit
Choose with care導師 is a job title as much as a relationship: a form tutor at school, a supervisor of a thesis. It says guidance, but with an institutional flavour that the English mentor does not carry.
Pairs well with恩師, the teacher one is indebted to, is what people call the mentor who changed them. It says gratitude where 導師 only states a position.
At small sizesSixteen strokes against ten, both tall and narrow. Dense as a pair, so give it height and keep the strokes of 導 from merging.
Meaning
Mentor; a guide, a supervising teacher.
The precise word, with leading the way in it rather than classroom teaching.
Other characters for “mentor”
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