Profile face TikZ

Question

My goal is get such head drawing: http://www.shutterstock.com/pic.mhtml?id=87217450

Answer 1

You can buy the image from shutterstock.com and then use a vector drawing program, e.g. Inkscape, to trace the image. There is a tutorial on how to trace an image in Inkscape here. (You may want to try this out on a different image from e.g. Google Images before buying the picture).

As an example, I did it for this picture:

I've taken the following steps:

• Import the picture into Inkscape using File > Import
• Trace the image by selecting it and then using Path > Trace bitmap; use Color Quantization, with 2 colors (the 2 colors will be black and white)
• You now have two objects: the original bitmap and the traced vector version of it. Delete the bitmap by selecting it and pressing Delete.
• Now save the file as a pdf file

Alternatively use inkscape2tikz to export to a TikZ file. This plugin has to be installed manually (see webpage for instructions, it's pretty easy). Here is the resulting TikZ code.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage{tikz}

\usepackage[active,tightpage]{preview}
\PreviewEnvironment{tikzpicture}

\begin{document}

\begin{tikzpicture}[y=0.80pt,x=0.80pt,yscale=-1, inner sep=0pt, outer sep=0pt]
\begin{scope}[shift={(-50.506837,-386.18185)}]
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    (250.5068,386.1819) -- (450.5068,386.1819) -- (450.5068,576.1819) --
    (450.5068,766.1819) -- (250.5068,766.1819) -- (50.5068,766.1819) --
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    and (293.5068,644.2933) .. (293.5068,641.1671) .. controls (293.5068,638.4185)
    and (295.0541,636.7164) .. (301.9444,631.8852) .. controls (305.3755,629.4794)
    and (305.1734,627.7921) .. (301.0804,624.6701) .. controls (297.3120,621.7959)
    and (293.3374,614.7869) .. (294.2005,612.5378) .. controls (294.5023,611.7513)
    and (296.1572,610.3867) .. (297.8780,609.5053) .. controls (301.7954,607.4989)
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    and (311.5830,529.9785) .. (312.6477,527.8966) .. controls (316.0849,521.1754)
    and (319.5193,502.8819) .. (321.0201,483.3004) .. controls (321.8783,472.1043)
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    and (96.5068,751.8277) .. (96.5068,757.8095) -- (96.5068,762.1883) --
    (249.7568,761.9351) -- (403.0068,761.6819) -- (402.8611,757.1819) -- cycle;
\end{scope}

\end{tikzpicture}
\end{document}