White Flag is the largest of Johns' flag paintings and the first in which the flag is presented in monochrome. The composition follows the design of a forty-star American flag. The stars-and-stripes design provides a structure for the richly varied surface, which goes from whites to beiges to ambers and from translucent to opaque. Each stroke seems distinct and gives a sense of the care the artist lavished on the work.

The painting consists of three separately stretched panels of cotton fabric joined at the back: the forty-eight stars area; the seven upper stripes to the right of the stars area; and the long area of the six stripes below. The painting is predominantly in the wax-based medium of encaustic. Johns worked on each panel separately, first laying down the overall flag design in charcoal. After applying a thin ground of unbleached, translucent beeswax, he built up the stars, the negative areas around them, and the stripes with applications of collage: small cut-out pieces of newsprint, other paper, and bits of fabric. He dipped these into molten beeswax and adhered them to the surface while the wax was hot. He then joined the three panels and painted over the entire surface with short, deliberate strokes of more unpigmented beeswax and touches of white oil paint.

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