How to create Candle Symbol in LaTeX

Question

I have a need to insert a candle symbol in "elite" in the place of "i". I browsed through the comprehensive LaTeX symbols pdf and could not find any one matching up. Is there any easy way to achieve this? An image processing tool is always a way but I wanted to see if LaTeX has any solutions for it.

Related questions: http://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/14/how-to-look-up-a-symbol and http://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/13594/how-to-add-a-custom-symbol-to-latex . — krlmlr, Feb 07 '12 at 20:47
Quite apart from the fact that this has received fantastic answers, this is one case where I think that detexify might not have worked: I'd love to see how to draw a candle in detexify sufficiently precisely that it doesn't look like a deformed i. — Andrew Stacey, Feb 08 '12 at 19:53
@Aku: I just noticed that the middle three letters of “elite” are “lit” and that the last four letters are “lite”, and that there is also the visual pun “e-lite”, e.g., “electronic light.” I am curious—what is this for? It's certainly an interesting use for a candle, and the coincidence with “lit” has me especially intrigued now. — Todd Lehman, Feb 08 '12 at 20:46
a friend of mine asked me about this, I was naive enough to post on forum, I should have change that to "Light" is it possible to change to light now since my friend wanted this to be his company logo. he told me that it was stupid on my part and now he can not use it, i feel really sad — Aku, Feb 14 '12 at 18:02

score 104 · Accepted Answer · edited Jun 11 '17 at 15:30

104

Here is a custom-designed Bezier-curve flame in TikZ combined with a dotless letter ‘i’:

candle examples

Here is the source:

\documentclass{minimal}
\usepackage{tikz}

\newcommand{\iflame}[2]{%
  \begin{tikzpicture}[scale=#1]
    \fill[color=#2]
      (0,0) .. controls (-1.5,1.25) and (.5,2) .. (-.2,4)
            .. controls (1,2.5) and (1,.5) .. (0,0);
  \end{tikzpicture}
}

\newcommand{\icandle}[1]{%
  \rlap{\kern-.0275em\raisebox{1.2ex}{\iflame{.035}{#1}}}$\i$%
}

\begin{document}

\noindent
el\icandle{red}te\\
el\icandle{orange}te\\
el\icandle{yellow!80!red}te\\
el\icandle{gray}te\\
elite\\
\par

\end{document}

If you find the serifs on the ‘i’ to be undesirable, you can substitute instead a vertical rule of height 1ex, depth 0ex, and width .7pt, with about .09em kerning on each side, and then lower the flame by .1ex. I tried it both ways and I personally like it better with the serifs on the ‘i’.

Addendum

I just noticed today that the middle three letters of “elite” are “lit” and that the last four letters are “lite”. There is also the visual pun “e-lite”, e.g., “electronic light.”

edited Jun 11 '17 at 15:30

David Carlisle

757,742

answered Feb 08 '12 at 05:29

Todd Lehman

13,912

14

Well then, this makes my little \sun loose some of its shine... – Werner Feb 08 '12 at 05:33
2

Aren't you a graphic designer? Because that logo is really terrific! – yo' Feb 08 '12 at 10:38
Just brilliant. Is it better to say cycle instead of ..(0,0) in the end of the curve? – hpekristiansen Feb 08 '12 at 11:35
Awesome, You guys are all "THE BEST". thanks for all your help. – Aku Feb 08 '12 at 12:50
Nice choice of design. – azetina Feb 08 '12 at 19:05
2

@Hans-PeterE.Kristiansen cycle only works with lines, so you can say -- cycle but it doesn't work with curves. As the path is filled, it is closed anyway so it doesn't make a difference to the final rendering. – Andrew Stacey Feb 08 '12 at 19:51
1

Excellent!! One suggestion: if you change the definition of iflame to use fill[#2] instead, then the options passed to icandle would be standard tikz options so other parameters could be passed in if so desired. For example: \icandle[color=red, opacity=0.5] etc. One could even specify a draw color different than a fill color. – Peter Grill Feb 08 '12 at 21:00
1

@PeterGrill: Ah yes, I like that idea. One thing to note: It's important here not to use a draw color (only fill color) as drawing a border significantly increases the size, while also exposing a path-cycle flaw at (0,0) in this implementation (not present in fill-only mode). If there were a way to stroke the path on the interior only, that might work. – Todd Lehman Feb 08 '12 at 21:04
Yes, but the thickness of the draw color can be controlled. Not that I am recommending it, up to the user to do what they want. This is already possible using what you have, but requires that the first parameter be a color, and saying [red,opacity=0.5] does not quite seem right. – Peter Grill Feb 08 '12 at 21:16
1

@ToddLehman You can stroke the path on the interior only by clipping against itself first (requires specifying the path twice). – Andrew Stacey Sep 26 '12 at 16:19

score 17 · Answer 2 · answered Feb 07 '12 at 21:27

Here is a text-based "candle", obtained by stacking \sun (from wasysym) on top of \i using the accents package. Some scaling is provided by \scalebox from graphicx. It even scales based on the font selection (like \large, \Large, ...).

enter image description here

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{graphicx}% http://ctan.org/pkg/graphicx
\usepackage{wasysym}% http://ctan.org/pkg/wasysym
\usepackage{accents}% http://ctan.org/pkg/accents
\newcommand{\sunI}{\ensuremath{\accentset{\scalebox{.5}{\sun}}{\mbox{\i}}}}%
\begin{document}
elite~el\sunI te
\end{document}

I'm not sure how candle-ish of a look you're after... :-|

Werner - That would work great for me, however there is always room for improvement. So I hope other people keep posting good suggestions. Thanks for your help — Aku, Feb 08 '12 at 00:38

score 12 · Answer 3 · answered Jan 14 '15 at 13:08

As there is a unicode for this in version 7.0, I present a pure symbols solution with the only available font I could find.

% arara: lualatex

\documentclass[a4paper,10pt]{article}
\usepackage{fontspec}
\newcommand*{\candle}{{\fontspec{symbola.ttf}\symbol{"1F56F}}}

\begin{document}
   el\candle te
\end{document}

enter image description here

score 12 · Answer 4 · answered Feb 07 '12 at 23:07

By adjusting the vertical postion of the symbols, I think that this can work:

\documentclass{minimal}
\usepackage{txfonts}
\usepackage{stmaryrd}
\usepackage{graphicx}
\usepackage{accents}
\newcommand{\candle}{\ensuremath{\accentset{\scalebox{.5}{\(\varspadesuit\)}}{\scalebox{.6}{\(\talloblong\)}}}}
\begin{document}
elite el\candle{}te
\end{document}

candle

score 5 · Answer 5 · edited Mar 30 '19 at 12:52

5

There's a \Candle symbol in tikzsymbols package.

\documentclass{standalone}
\usepackage{tikzsymbols}
\begin{document}
    \Candle
\end{document}

Output

A word of caution: I notice the flame is not exactly aligned.

edited Mar 30 '19 at 12:52

answered Oct 19 '17 at 18:39

hola

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3
35
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@Werner Do you know name of the cotton rope thing in between the wax and flame (English is not my first language :P)? – hola Oct 20 '17 at 18:21
1

It's called a candle wick. – Werner Oct 20 '17 at 18:35

How to create Candle Symbol in LaTeX

5 Answers5

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