Practice · Europe
France
How to draw the flag of France
The flag of France is a vertical tricolour of navy blue, white and red. Its official proportions are 3:2.
Colours used
- navy blue —
#002395 - white —
#ffffff - red —
#ed2939
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
France belongs to the red-white-blue tricolours. Stripe order and direction are the whole difference here — get those right before worrying about shade. The others in this group are Netherlands, Luxembourg and Russia.
France belongs to the vertical tricolours. Ireland and Italy trip up almost everyone: orange versus red on the fly side. The others in this group are Italy, Ireland, Belgium, Romania and Mexico.
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.
- 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 — Netherlands, Luxembourg and Russia share this layout.
- Drawing a neighbour by mistake — Italy, Ireland and Belgium 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
France 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.