Practice · Asia
Malaysia
How to draw the flag of Malaysia
The flag of Malaysia is fourteen horizontal stripes alternating red and white, with a yellow crescent and a yellow 14-pointed star at the centre. Its official proportions are 2:1.
Colours used
- red —
#cc0001 - white —
#ffffff - navy blue —
#010066 - yellow —
#ffcc00
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
Malaysia 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, Algeria and Tunisia.
How to draw it well
Because the bands run horizontally, the fastest route is one rectangle per band from the top down. Each band is one fourteenth of the height, so divide the canvas before you start filling — the most common way to lose points here is drifting proportions, where the top band creeps larger and squeezes the one at the bottom.
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 Algeria 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
Malaysia flies its flag at 2:1 — noticeably wider than the 3:2 most countries use, so leave room. 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.