Skydiving Parachute

Drawing a Skydiving Parachute in LaTeX

In this tutorial we will draw a skydiving parachute in LaTeX. The illustration has three main parts:

• the canopy made from circular arcs
• the suspension lines
• the small owl hanging below

The final result looks like this.

Step-by-Step TikZ Construction

Follow these steps.

1. Open your LaTeX editor.

2. Use the standalone document class with a 1cm border.

\documentclass[border=1cm]{standalone}

3. Load the tikz package.

\usepackage{tikz}

4. To draw the owl, load tikzlings-owls.

\usepackage{tikzlings-owls}

5. Start the document body and the drawing environment.

\begin{document}
\begin{tikzpicture}

6. Draw the main canopy as a semicircle.

\draw (0:3.5) arc (0:180:3.5);

The first result looks like this.

7. Add the smaller arcs under the canopy to form the attachment points for the lines.

\draw (-3.5,0) arc (180:0:0.5);
\draw (-2.5,0) arc (180:0:0.5);
\draw (-1.5,0) arc (180:0:0.5);
\draw (-0.5,0) arc (180:0:0.5);
\draw (0.5,0) arc (180:0:0.5);
\draw (1.5,0) arc (180:0:0.5);
\draw (2.5,0) arc (180:0:0.5);

The result looks like this.

Steps 6 and 7 can be shortened into a single command:

\draw (0:3.5) arc (0:180:3.5)
  \foreach \i in {1,...,7}{arc (180:0:0.5)} -- cycle;

To color the canopy, add these options after \draw:

[left color=red!80,right color=green!80]

The colored canopy looks like this.

8. Draw the suspension lines.

\foreach \i in {-3.5,...,3.5} {
  \draw (\i,0) -- (0,-5);
}

The result looks like this.

9. Place the owl below the lines.

\begin{scope}[yshift=-6.5cm]
  \owl
\end{scope}

The result looks like this.

10. To make the owl look more playful, add a top hat.

\thing[tophat,scale=1.5,yshift=-0.6cm,xshift=-0.05cm]

11. Add a speech thought bubble as well.

\thing[think={\small How are you?},scale=1.5,yshift=-0.6cm,xshift=0.3cm]

12. Close the drawing and the document.

\end{tikzpicture}
\end{document}

The final result after compilation looks like this.

That is a simple step-by-step guide to drawing a skydiving parachute in LaTeX. For more TikZ drawing inspiration, you can also browse latexdraw.com.