牛
Symbols Animals
ox
ㄋㄧㄡˊ niú
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 ox: steady, unglamorous work — the animal Chinese respects for pulling without complaint.
Before you commit
Choose with care牛 makes no distinction between ox, cow and bull. If the specific animal matters, one character cannot give it to you.
At small sizes4 strokes. Among the cleanest characters here, and safe on fingers, wrists and curved placements.
Cultural note老黃牛 is warm praise for someone who works hard and never complains — though what it praises is the not complaining, which is not always a compliment. The character itself also carries stubborn and proud: 牛氣 is a proud, swaggering air. In mainland internet slang 牛 alone means impressive, a usage Taiwanese readers recognise but mark as imported.
Meaning
Ox, cow, bull, cattle.
One character for all of them; Chinese does not split them by sex.
Other characters for “ox”
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