當
Symbols Life
present moment
下
ㄉㄤ ㄒㄧㄚˋ dāng xià
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.
Now, as against what has gone and what is coming. Chinese has a ready-made term that mindfulness writing has made very common.
Before you commit
Choose with care當下 is now heavily used in Buddhist and self-help writing, so it reads as a mindfulness term rather than as a neutral word for now.
Pairs well with活在當下, live in the present, is the full phrase and instantly recognised. The two characters alone imply the rest.
At small sizesSixteen strokes over two characters. 當 is heavy and 下 is only three strokes, so the pair looks unbalanced unless stacked.
Meaning
The present moment; right now, this instant.
The exact term Chinese uses for living in the present.
Other characters for “present moment”
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