nourishment

養

ㄧㄤˇ yǎng

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

Layout

Feeding something so it grows and keeps well. Chinese uses the same character for raising children, keeping animals and looking after your health.

Before you commit

Choose with care養 is very broad and rather domestic. It also means keeping a pet, and in some phrasings it means supporting someone financially, which is not always flattering.

Pairs well with養生, nurturing life, is the whole Chinese tradition of eating and living for long health. 修養 means cultivated character - nourishment turned inward.

At small sizesFifteen strokes with a sheep element stacked over the food radical. Busy in the middle and prone to filling in when small.

Meaning

To nourish, raise, rear, keep; to maintain health.

One character covering children, livestock, plants and your own body.

Other characters for “nourishment”

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