12

Is it possible to make a balloon-like shape in TikZ? Personally, I haven't found anything closer than an ellipse:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{tikz}

\begin{document}
\begin{tikzpicture}
    \tikzstyle{balloon}=[ball color=red];    
    \shade[balloon] ellipse (2 and 1);
\end{tikzpicture}
\end{document}
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  • You mean an inflatable balloon as opposed to a speech balloon I guess? – badroit Sep 19 '13 at 14:41
  • Yes, indeed. It is meant as an illustration of a physical experiment involving a helium balloon. – Gaussler Sep 19 '13 at 14:44
  • Everything’s possible but you need to specify the balloon’s path. You can use (ellipsoid) arcs, you can use to with specified angles, distances, looseness and such or directly specify a Bézier curve with the .. controls … .. operator. — On another node: Do you want to define a PGF shape (that can be used as a node similar to circle and rectangle) or do you only want to draw/fill a path shaped like a balloon? – Qrrbrbirlbel Sep 19 '13 at 14:48
  • I only need a single drawing of a balloon, that's all... :-) – Gaussler Sep 19 '13 at 14:54
  • I would go with hobby for this with some shading; a weakly related example is: Draw a closed liquid-droped shaped curve with TikZ. – Claudio Fiandrino Sep 19 '13 at 14:54
18

Without PSTricks.

\documentclass[tikz,border=12pt]{standalone}

\begin{document}
\begin{tikzpicture}
    \tikzstyle{balloon}=[ball color=red];    
    \shade[balloon] ellipse (1.75 and 2);
    \shade[balloon] (-.1,-2) -- (-.3,-2.2) -- (.3,-2.2) -- (.1,-2) -- cycle;
    \draw (0,-2.2) -- (0,-5);
\end{tikzpicture}
\end{document}

enter image description here

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