Practice · the Americas
Jamaica
How to draw the flag of Jamaica
The flag of Jamaica is divided by a gold saltire into four triangles: the top and bottom are green, the ones at the hoist and the fly are black.
Colours used
- black —
#000000 - green —
#009b3a - yellow —
#fed100
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
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.
The diagonals run corner to corner. Draw them with a thick brush in one stroke each rather than trying to build them from rectangles.
- 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
- Leaving a white margin around the edge of the canvas. Unpainted area is scored as wrong colour, so fill right to the borders.
Proportions
Jamaica 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.