diff --git a/doc/examples/plot_gabor.py b/doc/examples/plot_gabor.py
index fce7aff7..0ecc8468 100644
--- a/doc/examples/plot_gabor.py
+++ b/doc/examples/plot_gabor.py
@@ -100,19 +100,7 @@ for theta in (0, 1):
         # Save kernel and the power image for each image
         results.append((kernel, [power(img, kernel) for img in images]))
 
-# Prepare exes for ploting
-fig = plt.figure(figsize=(5, 6))
-axes = np.zeros((5, 4), dtype=np.object)
-# first column
-for n in range(0, 5):
-    axes[n,0] = plt.subplot(5, 4, 1+n*4)
-# the other columns, each column axes are shared
-for m in range(1, 4):
-    axes[0,m] = plt.subplot(5, 4, 1+m, adjustable='box-forced')
-    for n in range(1, 5):
-        axes[n,m] = plt.subplot(5, 4, 1+n*4+m, sharex=axes[0,m], sharey=axes[0,m])
-        axes[n,m].set_adjustable('box-forced')
-
+fig, axes = plt.subplots(nrows=5, ncols=4, figsize=(5, 6))
 plt.gray()
 
 fig.suptitle('Image responses for Gabor filter kernels', fontsize=12)
diff --git a/doc/examples/plot_gabors_from_astronaut.py b/doc/examples/plot_gabors_from_astronaut.py
index 095af98f..ed429203 100644
--- a/doc/examples/plot_gabors_from_astronaut.py
+++ b/doc/examples/plot_gabors_from_astronaut.py
@@ -69,12 +69,8 @@ fb2 = fb2.reshape((-1,) + patch_shape)
 fb2_montage = montage2d(fb2, rescale_intensity=True)
 
 # --
-fig = plt.figure(figsize=(7, 6))
-ax0 = plt.subplot(2, 2, 1, adjustable='box-forced')
-ax1 = plt.subplot(2, 2, 2)
-ax2 = plt.subplot(2, 2, 3, sharex=ax0, sharey=ax0, adjustable='box-forced')
-ax3 = plt.subplot(2, 2, 4)
-
+fig, axes = plt.subplots(2, 2, figsize=(7, 6))
+ax0, ax1, ax2, ax3 = axes.ravel()
 
 ax0.imshow(astro, cmap=plt.cm.gray)
 ax0.set_title("Image (original)")
@@ -88,7 +84,7 @@ ax2.set_title("Image (LGN-like DoG)")
 ax3.imshow(fb2_montage, cmap=plt.cm.gray, interpolation='nearest')
 ax3.set_title("K-means filterbank (codebook)\non LGN-like DoG image")
 
-for ax in [ax0, ax1, ax2, ax3]: 
+for ax in axes.ravel():
     ax.axis('off')
 
 fig.subplots_adjust(hspace=0.3)