firecracker

爆

竹

ㄅㄠˋ ㄓㄨˊ bào zhú

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

The strings of small explosives set off at new year and at weddings, to make noise and drive bad luck away.

Before you commit

Choose with careBoth good options are two characters, and both name a physical object. As a tattoo this reads literally, like the word fireworks rather than like celebration.

Cultural noteThe noise is meant to drive off bad luck - the oldest account, in 荊楚歲時記, has it scaring off mountain demons, and the beast 年 is a twentieth-century story rather than an ancient one. They are still set off at weddings and shop openings, though most cities now restrict where and when.

At small sizes爆竹 is around nineteen strokes plus six. 爆 is dense on the right beside the fire radical and needs real size to stay open.

Meaning

Firecrackers; literally exploding bamboo.

The classical name, from when green bamboo was thrown on a fire to bang.

Other characters for “firecracker”

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.

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