# TikZ silhouette of human face seen from the side

I am trying to make this picture in TikZ.

I wondered if anyone had already needed a silhouette of a human face, and therefore maybe had some code for a plot or something.

Just in case anyone had something :)

• Why do you want to make it in TikZ particularly? – cfr May 21 '17 at 17:57
• I think you're better off with some other tools to create this image; perhaps the right part could be done in TikZ but then you have to assemble it with the left part so I would feel that TikZ is not necessarily the right tool for it – Moriambar May 21 '17 at 18:10
• Just because these are roughly related and someone might need them: tex.stackexchange.com/questions/198378/… and ctan.org/pkg/tikzpeople. – CampanIgnis May 21 '17 at 19:50
• @cfr Why would I not want to make it in Tikz ;) #TikzIsLoveTikzIsLife – mriisa May 22 '17 at 11:02
• @mriisa Better things to do than reproduce copies of pictures you already have? TikZ is one tool. – cfr May 22 '17 at 11:04

Based on Mark Wibrow's answer, but I took your image and traced it in Inkscape, then used the coordinates from the SVG file (opening it in a text editor and finding the list of coordinates of the only path in the file).

\documentclass[tikz,border=5]{standalone}
\usetikzlibrary{svg.path}
\begin{document}
\begin{tikzpicture}[line width=1pt,scale=0.5]
\fill svg {m 182.9096,88.444477 c -2.34429,1.69819 -10.69606,9.25471 -18.55947,16.792243 -7.86342,7.53754 -16.72662,15.1454 -19.69601,16.90634 -7.33508,4.34996 -14.02508,6.06658 -17.91723,4.59746 -2.00784,-0.75788 -2.98165,-0.78599 -2.98165,-0.0861 0,0.57166 2.33047,5.34959 5.17882,10.61764 2.84835,5.26804 5.75892,12.07374 6.46793,15.12377 1.28283,5.51846 1.27227,5.57377 -2.16451,11.34315 -4.64576,7.79891 -7.006,16.47149 -9.04463,33.23394 -1.61026,13.24024 -1.60989,14.3682 0.007,20 2.48668,8.66344 5.58653,13.38376 13.7567,20.94808 11.40993,10.56384 21.06008,14.49507 35.73057,14.55575 5.40602,0.0224 9.49121,0.55022 11.0685,1.43021 1.75239,0.97768 4.33986,1.22561 8.65248,0.82907 4.58387,-0.42148 7.45696,-0.0966 11.26901,1.27416 4.84354,1.74171 5.27047,1.74894 8.00181,0.1355 1.58691,-0.93741 4.16585,-1.71257 5.73099,-1.72258 3.48723,-0.0223 9.95739,-4.30336 17.60297,-11.6472 l 5.76308,-5.53566 -2.04932,-2.64947 c -1.12713,-1.4572 -3.13387,-4.22446 -4.45942,-6.14946 l -2.4101,-3.5 1.85934,-10.5 c 1.02264,-5.775 2.52292,-12.61144 3.33396,-15.1921 1.29344,-4.11561 1.29523,-4.9482 0.0146,-6.77656 -1.36003,-1.94171 -0.97548,-2.76311 5.6153,-11.99444 9.14064,-12.80275 9.17529,-14.61145 0.32531,-16.97766 -4.03704,-1.07938 -4.24923,-1.3223 -4.23469,-4.84777 0.008,-2.0413 0.43566,-4.37618 0.94941,-5.18862 0.63908,-1.01062 0.42737,-2.03709 -0.6703,-3.25 -1.47463,-1.62945 -1.46541,-1.92642 0.11404,-3.67169 1.6304,-1.80157 1.61488,-1.9714 -0.30292,-3.31467 -1.91958,-1.34453 -1.94795,-1.65973 -0.56345,-6.26008 2.05729,-6.83587 1.88174,-7.9346 -1.91017,-11.9552 -3.18261,-3.37455 -3.7217,-3.5712 -9.7899,-3.5712 -3.532,0 -9.10387,0.72919 -12.38192,1.62043 -10.41466,2.83154 -9.82692,2.90075 -12.88895,-1.51776 -1.74758,-2.52176 -3.00238,-5.86359 -3.31549,-8.82999 -0.27709,-2.62497 -1.29173,-5.67268 -2.25476,-6.77268 -3.06651,-3.50263 -4.17031,-6.546563 -4.84401,-13.358233 -0.5603,-5.66516 -0.95709,-6.68474 -2.69853,-6.93402 -1.1229,-0.16073 -3.9597,1.09719 -6.30399,2.79539 z};

\draw[dashed] (8.5,6.6) --++ (1.5,0);
\end{tikzpicture}

\end{document}


By the way, in the image you want to recreate, the camera viewfinder seems to be positioned too high (pointing to his eyebrows). I fixed it in my example.

Not quite as detailed as the required picture but created using Inkscape and copying the path from the xml editor into a TikZ path using the svg.path library:

\documentclass[tikz,border=5]{standalone}
\usetikzlibrary{svg.path}
\begin{document}
\tikz\fill svg {M 29,64
C 23,64 17,63 13,61 C  9,59  4,52  2,47 C  0,42  3,28  8,22
C 13,16 10,14  8, 8 C 10, 5 26, 6 29, 0 C 30, 2 34, 5 36, 6
C 38, 7 41, 8 43, 7 C 45, 6 50, 5 52, 7 C 54, 9 53,11 53,12
C 53,13 55,16 55,17 C 55,18 53,19 53,20 C 53,21 56,22 56,23
C 56,24 54,25 54,28 C 54,31 62,31 62,33 C 62,35 54,41 53,43
C 52,45 50,51 49,54 C 48,57 53,60 51,61 C 49,62 35,64 29,64 Z};
\end{document}


• A search on openclipart.org for silhouette head provides a rich source of more detailed profiles (along with some less detailed ones and some not-really-silhouette ones). – cfr May 21 '17 at 18:58
• Could you say what you mean by 'the xml editor'? Is this part of Inkscape? I've exported to TikZ code from there, but the result is usually much, much, much less elegant than your path. (But that could be for other reasons.) – cfr May 21 '17 at 19:00
• @cfr isn't it just from the normal svg file for the drawing? Thanks s just XML data and the data Mark is using is presumably listed verbatim in the svg file. That what I've used the times where I've copied svg data to tikz. – daleif May 21 '17 at 19:09
• @daleif Thanks. I didn't realise that SVG was just XML, so I thought I must need some special editing thing to access the XML in the SVG, if you see what I mean. Now it makes more sense :-). – cfr May 21 '17 at 19:21
• @cfr ctrl-shift-X in Inkscape produces the XML editor – Mark Wibrow May 22 '17 at 6:17

with a free image from https://cdn.pixabay.com/photo/2012/04/13/18/23/man-33153_960_720.png

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{graphicx}
\begin{document}

\includegraphics[width=2cm]{/tmp/man}
\reflectbox{\includegraphics[width=2cm]{/tmp/man}}

\end{document}


Not directly from the side, but the marvosym package also contains a human face:

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage{tikz}
\usepackage{marvosym}

\begin{document}

\begin{tikzpicture}
\node[scale=10] {\MartinVogel};
\end{tikzpicture}

\end{document}


And not directly a human, but seen from the side:

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage{tikz}
\usepackage{simpsons}

\begin{document}

\begin{tikzpicture}
\node {\Burns};
\end{tikzpicture}

\end{document}


From the pgfornament package:

\documentclass[margin=10mm]{standalone}

\usepackage{pgfornament}

\begin{document}

\begin{tikzpicture}
\pgfornament{164}
\end{tikzpicture}

\end{document}