Python Matplotlib: plot with 2-dimensional arguments : how to specify options?

Question

I am plotting several curves as follow:

import numpy as np
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

plt.plot(x, y)

where x and y are 2-dimensional (say N x 2 for the sake of this example).

Now I would like to set the colour of each of these curves independently. I tried things like:

plot(x, y, color= colorArray)

with e.g. colorArray= ['red', 'black'], but to no avail. Same thing for the other options (linestyle, marker, etc.).

I am aware this could be done with a a for loop. However since this plot command accepts multi-dimensional x/y I thought it should be possible to also specify the plotting options this way.

Is it possible? What's the correct way to do this? (everything I found when searching was effectively using a loop)

Answer 1

You could use ax.set_color_cycle:

import numpy as np
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
np.random.seed(2013)
N = 10
x, y = np.random.random((2,N,2))
x.cumsum(axis=0, out=x)
y.cumsum(axis=0, out=y)
fig, ax = plt.subplots()
colors = ['red', 'black']
ax.set_color_cycle(colors)
ax.plot(x,y)
plt.show()

yields

Answer 2

I would plot in the way you are doing, then doing a for loop changing the colors accordingly to your colorArray:

plt.plot(x,y)
for i, line in enumerate(plt.gca().lines):
    line.set_color( colorArray[i] )