畫

It is an ideogram rather than a phono-semantic compound.

In oracle bone script (甲骨文 jiǎgǔwén), it depicted a brush (聿) drawing a shape.

In bronze inscriptions (金文 jinwen) and small seal script (小篆), the drawn form beneath evolved into 田 (field) with surrounding lines.

Thus, the 田 and 一 seen in the modern regular script form do not carry their usual meanings; they are graphic residues from the earlier pictorial representation.

Extremely common in words relating to pictures, art, diagrams, and plans.

劃 (획) is often distinguished in Korean usage for stroke/delineation, while 畫 is more picture/art/plan.

회화 (繪畫) – painting, picture

만화 (漫畫) – cartoon, comic

도화 (圖畫) – drawing, picture

계획 (計劃/計畫) – plan, scheme

획화 (劃畫) – demarcation, to draw lines

Originally, 畫 was a polyphonic character:

As a verb (“to draw, to mark, to write, to divide with lines, to plan”), it was read with an entering tone.

As a noun (“picture, plan”), it was read with a departing tone.

Since 畫 became more commonly used as a noun (“picture”), a new character 劃 (획, to mark/engrave a stroke) was created to make the verbal meaning explicit.

Later script reforms:

In Japanese shinjitai, 畫 and 劃 were merged into 画.

In Simplified Chinese, 畫 became 画, while 劃 was simplified to 划. However, when 劃 is used with the meaning “to mark, to draw a line,” it is treated as interchangeable with 畫 and simplified as 画.

畵 (U+7575): commonly used in Korea, included in the Korean Hanja Proficiency Test (준특급).

画 (U+753B): used in Japanese shinjitai and Simplified Chinese, but the Japanese and Chinese forms of 画 differ slightly. Unicode assigns both to U+753B, so the exact appearance depends on the font.

Note: 畫 (picture) is only one stroke apart from 晝 (daytime, 낮 주), making them easy to confuse, especially at small font sizes.