單
Symbols Emotions
unrequited love
戀
ㄉㄢ ㄌㄧㄢˋ dān liàn
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.
Loving someone who does not love you back — or who does not know at all.
Before you commit
Choose with careNo single character says this. 單戀 and 暗戀 mean different things — one is refused, the other never declared. Pick the one that is true.
At small sizes戀 is 23 strokes and the densest glyph in this batch. It closes into a block when small; give it height and open linework.
Cultural note癡情 describes devotion carried past reason. It is half admiring and half a warning, which may be exactly the register you want.
Meaning
One-sided love.
The exact term: they know, and it is not returned.
Other characters for “unrequited love”
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