瑕
Symbols Beauty
imperfection
ㄒㄧㄚˊ xiá
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 flaw that is part of the thing. The Chinese words for it are blunter than the affectionate English sense.
Before you commit
Choose with careNone of these is affectionate. English speakers usually mean imperfection as something to embrace, while 瑕 and 缺 are plain fault-finding words with no warmth in them.
At small sizesThirteen strokes with the jade radical on the left. The right half is busy and closes up when small.
Cultural note瑕不掩瑜 - the flaw does not hide the jade's lustre. That is the nearest classical sentiment to loving something imperfect.
Meaning
A flaw in a piece of jade; a blemish or defect.
The classical word for a fault in something that is otherwise fine.
Other characters for “imperfection”
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