形
Symbols Beauty
pure form
ㄒㄧㄥˊ xíng
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.
Shape considered on its own, with nothing representational attached. This is an art-theory phrase with no Chinese equivalent.
Before you commit
Choose with careThere is no Chinese term for pure form. 形 alone is just shape, as in 形狀, and putting 純 in front of it makes something a reader will parse but not recognise.
Pairs well with形式 for form as opposed to content, 形態 for form as configuration. Both are real words and both are more specific than the English phrase.
At small sizesSeven strokes, with three parallel diagonals on the right. They are the only part at risk, and only if the ink spreads.
Meaning
Form, shape, outline; the visible figure of a thing.
The plain word for shape - what an object looks like.
Other characters for “pure form”
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