惕
Symbols Protection
vigilance
ㄊㄧˋ tì
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.
Staying watchful before anything has happened. Chinese keeps this separate from fear and from ordinary attention.
Before you commit
Choose with care惕 almost never stands alone in modern writing. Readers know it from 警惕 and from classical 惕厲, so on its own it looks deliberately literary.
Pairs well with警惕 for plain vigilance, 惕厲 for the classical sense of staying sharp through hardship. Both read more naturally than the single character.
At small sizesEleven strokes with a narrow heart radical on the left. Fine at moderate size; the right side crowds when inked very small.
Meaning
Wary, on guard, alert to danger.
Inner vigilance - the heart radical marks it as a state of mind.
Other characters for “vigilance”
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