Practice · the Americas
Cuba
How to draw the flag of Cuba
The flag of Cuba is five horizontal stripes alternating navy blue and white, with a red triangle at the hoist and a white five-pointed star at the centre. Its official proportions are 2:1.
Colours used
- navy blue —
#002a8f - white —
#ffffff - red —
#cf142b
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.
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 fiveth 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.
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.
The triangle at the hoist should reach roughly to the middle of the flag. Draw it early: it defines where the horizontal bands get cut off, and adding it last usually means painting over work you already did.
- 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
- 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
Cuba 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.