險
Symbols Life
risk
ㄒㄧㄢˇ xiǎn
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.
Exposing yourself to possible loss. Chinese frames it around danger and around the act of braving danger deliberately.
Before you commit
Choose with care險 is a negative word in Chinese - danger, peril, treachery in 陰險. It does not carry the admiring tone that risk-taker has in English.
Pairs well with冒險 if you want the sense of daring rather than mere danger. 險 alone reads as a warning sign.
At small sizesSixteen strokes with a crowded right side. It needs scale to stay legible on skin.
Meaning
Danger, peril; risky, precarious; also rugged terrain.
The danger side of risk, without the sense of a calculated bet.
Other characters for “risk”
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