水
Symbols Nature
water
ㄕㄨㄟˇ shuǐ
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.
Water: the yielding element that wears down stone, and the central Daoist image of strength through softness.
Before you commit
Choose with care水 is elemental and neutral, and in slang it also means watered-down or shoddy, as in 水貨 for grey-market goods.
At small sizesFour strokes with plenty of white space. Safe at any size and on any curve.
Cultural note上善若水 — the highest good is like water — is the line from the Daodejing that most water tattoos are reaching for.
Meaning
Water.
Four strokes, instantly read, and one of the oldest and plainest characters.
Other characters for “water”
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