simplicity

樸

ㄆㄨˊ pú · mainland reads pǔ

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

Layout

Plainness by choice: few parts, no ornament.

Before you commit

Choose with care樸 means unworked and natural, which is closer to the simplicity people want than 簡 is. 簡 leans toward brief or abbreviated, and it is the 簡 of simplified characters, an odd note on a traditional-character piece.

Pairs well with返璞歸真, return to the uncarved and the true, is the classical phrase for this idea.

At small sizes樸 is sixteen strokes with a wood radical and a busy right side. Give it room.

Meaning

Plain, unworked, unadorned.

Uncarved wood, the Daoist image of things left as they are.

Other characters for “simplicity”

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