牡
Symbols Nature
peony
丹
ㄇㄨˇ ㄉㄢ mǔ dān
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 full, heavy flower that stands for wealth and rank; there is no single character for it.
Before you commit
Choose with careNeither 牡 nor 丹 means peony alone. 牡 is male, of animals, and 丹 is cinnabar red. Split them and the meaning is gone.
At small sizesLight for a two-character phrase, at seven and four strokes. It prints far cleaner than most flower names.
Cultural noteThe peony reads as prosperous, worldly and confident, not delicate or melancholy. It is the flower of Luoyang and of Tang-dynasty abundance.
Meaning
Tree peony; the king of flowers, and the emblem of prosperity.
The real Chinese word, and both characters are needed for it to read at all.
Other characters for “peony”
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