TikZ-PGF – Filling the Area Between Two Circles

tikz-pgf

How can I fill the area between two concentric circles (or even slightly eccentric) using only tikz (preferably without pgfplots)? I have found many sort-of similar questions, but nothing that quite addresses this.

\documentclass[tikz,border=1pt]{standalone}

\begin{document}
\begin{tikzpicture}
    \draw (0, 0) circle (1);
    \draw (0, 0) circle (1.2);
\end{tikzpicture}
\end{document}

I want to fill the area between these two with the color gray. I would prefer not to fill the inner circle with white color, but leave that transparent, or unfilled.

Best Answer

You can use the even odd rule for filling. The red line is just to show the inner circle is transparent.

\documentclass[tikz,border=1pt]{standalone}
\begin{document}
\begin{tikzpicture}
  \draw[red,thick] (-1.2,-1.2) -- (1.2,1.2);
  \fill[gray!40,even odd rule] (0,0) circle (1.2) (0,0) circle (1);
  \draw (0, 0) circle (1);
  \draw (0, 0) circle (1.2);
\end{tikzpicture}
\end{document}

Related Solutions

PGFPlots – Filling Area Between Two Functions with Shading

Following your idea (I don't know pgfplots very much), you could stack successively the positive part and the negative part of the difference of the two functions.

As the following code shows, it is not perfect, but it works. Note that I have increased the sample size in order to smooth the sign-changing parts.

\documentclass{minimal}
\usepackage{tikz,pgfplots}
\begin{document}
\tikz[scale=.6,domain=-2:2,samples=50]{
    \begin{axis}[axis on top=false, axis x line=middle, axis y line=middle,stack plots=y]
        % plot first function
        \addplot+[mark=none] {.55*x+.13};
        % substract first function from the second one, since they are stacked, and plot successively the positive and negative parts
        \addplot+[mark=none,fill=red,draw=black] {max(.2*x^3-.05*x^2+.2-(.55*x+.13),0)} \closedcycle;
        \addplot+[mark=none,fill=green,draw=black] {min(.2*x^3-.05*x^2+.2-(.55*x+.13),0)} \closedcycle;
    \end{axis}
}
\end{document}

enter image description here

Drawing Concentric Circles with Text and Shading in TikZ

Something like this is made with the libraries decorations.text and arrows.meta together with the correspondent options

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{tikz}
\usetikzlibrary{decorations.text,calc,arrows.meta}
\begin{document}
\begin{tikzpicture}
\coordinate (O) at (0,0);

\draw (O) circle (2.5);
\draw (O) circle (1.5);
\draw (O) circle (0.5);

\draw[decoration={text along path,reverse path,text align={align=center},text={Wee}},decorate] (0.6,0) arc (0:180:0.6);
\draw[decoration={text along path,reverse path,text align={align=center},text={There is a way?}},decorate] (1.6,0) arc (0:180:1.6);
\draw[decoration={text along path,reverse path,text align={align=center},text={Should be here any!}},decorate] (2.6,0) arc (0:180:2.6);

\begin{scope}[xshift=6cm]
\coordinate (O) at (0,0);
\draw[fill=red!30] (O) circle (2.8);
\draw[fill=green!40] (O) circle (2);
\draw[fill=yellow!70] (O) circle (1.2);
\draw[fill=blue!45] (O) circle (0.4);

\draw[decoration={text along path,reverse path,text align={align=center},text={xxx}},decorate] (0.5,0) arc (0:180:0.5);
\draw[decoration={text along path,reverse path,text align={align=center},text={yyy}},decorate] (1.3,0) arc (0:180:1.3);
%\draw[decoration={text along path,reverse path,text align={align=center},text={Should be here any!}},decorate] (2.1,0) arc (0:180:2.1);
\draw[decoration={text along path,reverse path,text align={align=center},text={Hello, how are you?}},decorate] (2.9,0) arc (0:180:2.9);
\end{scope}
\draw[line width=2mm,>={Triangle[length=3mm,width=5mm]},->] (2.6,0) -- (3.8,0);
\end{tikzpicture}
\end{document}

Result