Get current color cycle

In many plotting situations, it is needed to use the same color repeatedly for several plotting elements. This can be achieved by reading the plt.rcParams field of matplotlib.

Example

import numpy as np
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

cycle = plt.rcParams['axes.prop_cycle'].by_key()['color']

x=np.linspace(0,2*np.pi,300)

for idx,i in enumerate([1,2,4,8]) :
    y=np.sin(i*x)
    plt.plot(x,y,color=cycle[idx])
    plt.fill_between(x,y1=0,y2=y,color=cycle[idx],alpha=0.1)

The plot