Painting

Paintings are simple, low-resolution versions of a canvas. Paintings are currently non-flammable and can protect flammable blocks from catching on fire.

Obtaining
To destroy a painting, it. If hit with a throwable item, the painting will drop from the wall and can be picked up and placed again. Arrows will disappear when they hit a painting. Lightning and explosions will also knock down paintings. Paintings will drop when any supporting block is removed.

Crafting
Paintings can be crafted with any color of wool. The color of wool used does not influence the picture chosen when the painting is placed.

Placement
Paintings can only be placed on flat, vertical surfaces. An easy way to get a painting to fill up an area is to mark the bounds with any solid block and place it in the bottom-left corner. It expands canvas size to the top-right to fill up the wall the best it can. Going up and right one block increases the chance for paintings 4×2 or bigger, though it may still take a few tries to get a large painting. Since paintings are not a block, they can simultaneously exist with water and torches in the same space as itself. The lower left edge of a painting is not always the block you put the painting on, some of the larger paintings extend down and to the left of the block you placed the painting. Players and mobs are able to walk through paintings, and light shows through paintings, as well.

Canvases
There are 26 paintings in the game. These are mostly based on paintings by Kristoffer Zetterstrand, who also created the Minecraft versions. A random image from among these is chosen each time a painting is placed.

Pocket and Pi Edition
In Pocket Edition (since 0.5.0) and Pi Edition (since 0.1), there are four additional 2×2 tile paintings with no clear purpose or use. Using IDA and the Android libminecraftpe.so file, it has been found that the paintings are referenced from Pocket Edition game code, particularly in the “Motive::getAllMotivesAsList(void)" method (get all paintings), but the “Painting::setRandomMotive(int)" method excludes them as possibilities for a random painting. Artist and purpose of these paintings are both unknown.

Trivia

 * On 26 April 2011 Notch stated that the auto mapping code can be used to share custom paintings and books in the future.
 * In SMP, if a player is standing behind a painting, other players do not see their name.
 * Paintings are not actually attached to the wall. If you look closely, there is a gap between the painting and the wall.
 * The texture on the back of a painting is the same texture of wooden planks, darkened slightly.