How To Draw the Union Flag

The flag is twice as wide as it is high. The cross of St George is red, it has width equal to one fifth the flag's height, and a white border of width one fifteenth the height. The cross of St Andrew is interchanged with that of St Patrick. You begin by drawing the diagonals of the complete flag, and then the lines parallel to these that are at a distance of one tenth and one fifteenth the height of the flag. At the hoist side colour red the diagonally-orientated area of one fifteenth the height that lies below the diagonals, and at the fly, the diagonally-orientated area of width one fifteenth the height that lies above the diagonals. To finish, colour blue everywhere that is both more than one-tenth the height away from the diagonals, and more than one fifteenth the height away from the red of the cross of St George. The flag of the United Kingdom is quite intricate and is often drawn incorrectly. The rectangle on the left shows a typical error, in which the cross of St Patrick abuts at a right-angle to the white edge of the cross of St George. In the 2:1 version of the flag, the four red parts of the cross of St Patrick should always be at quadrilaterals. Two of them have two sides parallel and two perpendicular; the other two have both pairs of non-adjacent sides parallel. The four red parts of the cross of St Patrick should not be pentagons or hexagons, although they are very often drawn that way.