Practice · Europe
Iceland
How to draw the flag of Iceland
The flag of Iceland is a red Nordic cross with a white outline, on a blue field. It is Norway's flag with red and blue exchanged.
Colours used
- navy blue —
#02529c - white —
#ffffff - red —
#dc1e35
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
Iceland belongs to the Nordic crosses. They share one layout and differ only in colour and whether the cross carries a border, which is exactly why they are so easy to mix up. The others in this group are Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Finland.
How to draw it well
This is a Nordic cross, and the single detail that separates a good score from a great one is that the vertical arm is not centred — it sits closer to the hoist, roughly a third of the way across. Draw the horizontal arm through the middle, then offset the vertical one to the left.
- 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 — Sweden, Denmark and Norway share this layout.
- Leaving a white margin around the edge of the canvas. Unpainted area is scored as wrong colour, so fill right to the borders.
Proportions
Iceland flies its flag at 25:18 — squarer than most national flags, which changes how the design is spaced. 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.