熊
Symbols Animals
bear
ㄒㄩㄥˊ xióng
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.
The bear: bulk and blunt strength, with a streak of clumsiness that Chinese does not let it forget.
Before you commit
Choose with care熊 used as an adjective in northern speech means useless or gutless, and 狗熊 means a coward. The strong-bear reading is not the only one available.
At small sizes14 strokes and bottom-heavy from the four dots. Those dots merge into a bar when it is inked small.
Cultural noteThe Formosan black bear, with its white chest crescent, is a well-loved national symbol in Taiwan. There 黑熊 reads with real affection.
Meaning
Bear.
The single character, with the four fire dots at the base.
Other characters for “bear”
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