Flag of Bhutan line between the background colours. This change sought to avoid having the dragon "face the earth" when the flag was hanging limp. Bhutanese artist Kilkhor Lopen Jada painted a new design for the druk in which the curves of the dragon's body are relaxed to create a somewhat longer and more gently undulating shape. The CBS document states that the king ordered the colour of the lower half changed from red to orange "sometime in 1968 or 69." The Bhutanese flag was flown abroad beside another nation's flag for the first time in 1961 during a state visit to India
Flag of Bhutan of the first national flag of 1949, with the colour of the dragon changed from green to white. The retinue of the Druk Gyalpo included a convoy consisting of over one hundred ponies; a small version of the flag was placed on the saddle of every tenth pony, and a large flag approximately in size was flown in the camp every evening, hoisted to the sound of a bugle. Beginning in the late 1950s, Dasho Shingkhar Lam, former Secretary to Jigme Dorji Wangchuck and Sixth Speaker of the National Assembly (1971–74), was requested by the king to make several modifications