contemplation

觀

ㄍㄨㄢ guān

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

Layout

Looking at something long enough for it to open up. The Chinese character comes out of meditation practice rather than philosophy.

Before you commit

Choose with care觀 also simply means to look at or to view - 參觀 is to tour a factory. The contemplative sense comes from context, not from the character alone.

At small sizesAround twenty-five strokes and dense on both halves. Traditional 觀 is not a small-size character - allow real room, or take 思.

Cultural note觀 opens the name 觀音, the bodhisattva Guanyin, the one who hears the world. It is also an ordinary character in daily use — 參觀 to visit, 觀察 to observe, 世界觀 a worldview — so the religious reading only comes forward when the context invites it.

Meaning

To observe, to contemplate; contemplative insight.

The watching that goes on long enough to change the one watching.

Other characters for “contemplation”

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