庇
Symbols Protection
refuge
ㄅㄧˋ bì
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.
A place or person that shields you from harm. Chinese frames this as shelter given from above, like shade or a roof.
Before you commit
Choose with care庇 is a verb and rarely stands alone. It also carries a shadow of 包庇, to shield a wrongdoer, so on its own the tone is not purely warm.
Pairs well with庇護 for plain shelter, 庇佑 for protection given by a god or ancestor. Either reads far more naturally than the single character.
At small sizesSeven strokes with an open left-top corner. It holds up small, but the sloping roof stroke can look thin if the line weight is uneven.
Where the sense comes fromThe character is literally tree shade, and that is where the protection sense comes from: what an ancestor casts over descendants is the same word as what a tree casts over the ground. Taiwan reads 蔭 yìn for both senses. The mainland splits them — 树荫 (tree shade) is yīn, while 庇荫 and 荫庇, the protection meant here, are yìn on both sides.
Meaning
To shelter, shield, take under one's protection.
The verb for a stronger party covering a weaker one.
Other characters for “refuge”
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