松
Symbols Animals
squirrel
鼠
ㄙㄨㄥ ㄕㄨˇ sōng shǔ
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.
Squirrel in Chinese is literally pine-mouse; there is no single character for it.
Before you commit
Choose with careDo not shorten this to 鼠. Dropping 松 turns a squirrel into a rat, and the difference in how it reads is enormous.
Pairs well with松 on its own means pine, and carries endurance through winter. Some people prefer that character alone to the animal it modifies.
At small sizes8 plus 13 strokes. 松 stays crisp but 鼠 crowds at the base, so size for the second character, not the first.
Meaning
Squirrel, literally pine mouse. The standard word.
Both characters are needed; this is the only form that means squirrel.
Other characters for “squirrel”
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