形
Symbols Beauty
shape
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.
The outline a thing has. Chinese does not split shape from form the way English does - both land on one character.
Before you commit
Choose with careChinese has no separate word for shape as against form. If you want the difference marked, it has to come from the pairing, not from 形 alone.
Pairs well with形狀 for shape, 外形 for outward appearance, 形體 for a physical form.
At small sizesSeven strokes, open and light. One of the most forgiving characters in this set, small or on curved skin.
Meaning
Shape, form, figure; the outline of something.
The single answer to both shape and form in Chinese.
Other characters for “shape”
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