How do I set color to Rectangle in Matplotlib?

Question

How do I set color to Rectangle for example in matplotlib? I tried using argument color, but had no success.

I have following code:

fig=pylab.figure() ax=fig.add_subplot(111)  pylab.xlim([-400, 400])     pylab.ylim([-400, 400]) patches = [] polygon = Rectangle((-400, -400), 10, 10, color='y') patches.append(polygon)  p = PatchCollection(patches, cmap=matplotlib.cm.jet) ax.add_collection(p) ax.xaxis.set_major_locator(MultipleLocator(20))     ax.yaxis.set_major_locator(MultipleLocator(20))      pylab.show() 

Answer 1

I couldn't get your code to work, but hopefully this will help:

import matplotlib import matplotlib.pyplot as plt  fig = plt.figure() ax = fig.add_subplot(111) rect1 = matplotlib.patches.Rectangle((-200,-100), 400, 200, color='yellow') rect2 = matplotlib.patches.Rectangle((0,150), 300, 20, color='red') rect3 = matplotlib.patches.Rectangle((-300,-50), 40, 200, color='#0099FF') circle1 = matplotlib.patches.Circle((-200,-250), radius=90, color='#EB70AA') ax.add_patch(rect1) ax.add_patch(rect2) ax.add_patch(rect3) ax.add_patch(circle1) plt.xlim([-400, 400]) plt.ylim([-400, 400]) plt.show() 

produces:

Answer 2

Turns out, you need to do ax.add_artist(Rectangle) to have the color specifications work; when using patches.append(Rectangle), the rectangle is shown in blue (on my PC, at least) ignoring any color specification.

Btw, note that artists — Matplotlib 1.2.1 documentation: class matplotlib.patches.Rectangle states that there is

• edgecolor - for stroke color
• facecolor - for fill color

... and then there is color - which basically sets both stroke and fill color at the same time.

Here is the modified OP code, which I've tested on Linux (Ubuntu 11.04), python 2.7, matplotlib 0.99.3:

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt import matplotlib.collections as collections import matplotlib.ticker as ticker  import matplotlib print matplotlib.__version__ # 0.99.3  fig=plt.figure() #pylab.figure() ax=fig.add_subplot(111)  ax.set_xlim([-400, -380]) #pylab.xlim([-400, 400]) ax.set_ylim([-400, -380]) #pylab.ylim([-400, 400]) patches = [] polygon = plt.Rectangle((-400, -400), 10, 10, color='yellow') #Rectangle((-400, -400), 10, 10, color='y') patches.append(polygon)  pol2 = plt.Rectangle((-390, -390), 10, 10, facecolor='yellow', edgecolor='violet', linewidth=2.0) ax.add_artist(pol2)   p = collections.PatchCollection(patches) #, cmap=matplotlib.cm.jet) ax.add_collection(p) ax.xaxis.set_major_locator(ticker.MultipleLocator(20)) # (MultipleLocator(20))  ax.yaxis.set_major_locator(ticker.MultipleLocator(20)) # (MultipleLocator(20))   plt.show() #pylab.show() 

this is the output: