Practice · Africa
Algeria
How to draw the flag of Algeria
The flag of Algeria is 2 vertical bands of dark green and white, with a red crescent and a red five-pointed star at the centre. Its official proportions are 3:2.
Colours used
- dark green —
#006233 - white —
#ffffff - red —
#d21034
You do not need to match these hex values exactly. Scoring allows a generous margin on shade because nobody remembers the precise navy of a flag; what it does not forgive is putting the right colour in the wrong place.
Flags it gets confused with
Algeria belongs to the crescent-and-star flags. Check which side the crescent opens towards and whether the field is split before you draw. The others in this group are Turkey, Pakistan, Tunisia and Malaysia.
How to draw it well
The bands run vertically, which is exactly where people slip: it is easy to draw the right three colours in the right order and still place them as horizontal stripes. Fix the orientation in your head first, then fill from the hoist (left) outwards.
Draw the crescent as a filled disc first, then take a second, slightly smaller disc out of it with the fill or eraser — that gives you clean horns. A crescent drawn as a thick banana shape is the usual reason this flag scores lower than it should.
The star is small relative to the field, so it contributes less to the score than the background. Place the background first, fill it completely, and only then add the star.
- Fill the whole canvas with the background or the first stripe — an unpainted margin costs you points.
- Lay in the remaining bands with the rectangle tool, keeping the divisions level.
- Add the central detail last, checking its size against the height of the flag.
- Press Check my flag to see your drawing next to the real one.
Where people lose points on this flag
- Drawing a neighbour by mistake — Turkey, Pakistan and Tunisia share this layout.
- Reversing the order of the bands. Half of all lost points on tricolours come from this alone.
- Leaving a white margin around the edge of the canvas. Unpainted area is scored as wrong colour, so fill right to the borders.
Proportions
Algeria flies its flag at 3:2. The drawing canvas is a fixed shape and scoring compares regions rather than absolute measurements, so you do not need to reproduce the ratio exactly; what matters is that the internal divisions land in the right relative places.