Make longer subplot tick marks in matplotlib?

Question

I am trying to alter the tick marks along the axes of a python multipanel subplot. I have two panels that share a common x-axis. I have made the border around the plot thicker as well as making all of the tick marks along the axes thicker. I have two questions:

How can I make all tick marks (both axes) longer so they are more visible?

How do I add smaller but still noticable tick marks between major tick marks?

Here is a minimum working example of what I have so far.

from numpy import * from scipy import * from pylab import * from random import * import pylab import matplotlib.pyplot as plt   #make the axis border thick pylab.rc("axes", linewidth=4.0) pylab.rc("lines", markeredgewidth=4)   #create a figure with two panels that shares the x-axis f, (ax1, ax2) = plt.subplots(2, sharex=True, sharey=False) #example figure1 ax1.plot(range(2),range(2),linewidth=2) #example figure 2 ax2.plot(range(2),range(2),linewidth=2)    # Fine-tune figure; make subplots close to each other and hide x ticks for # all but bottom plot. f.subplots_adjust(hspace=0) plt.setp([a.get_xticklabels() for a in f.axes[:-1]], visible=False) show() 

Answer 1

Try the following:

#example figure1 ax1.plot(range(2),range(2),linewidth=2) ax1.minorticks_on() ax1.tick_params('both', length=20, width=2, which='major') ax1.tick_params('both', length=10, width=1, which='minor') 

You can repeat the same for ax2. Does this work for you?