How to Craft a Painting in Minecraft

Finding the Materials

Find wool. You'll need one piece of wool. This can be obtained by shearing a sheep with a pair of shears. Any color of wool is fine. Currently, the shade of the wool has no influence over the resulting painting.

Find eight sticks. These are crafted from wooden planks, in the same way that the image above shows.

Crafting the Painting

Place the wool and sticks into the crafting grid. For the Painting Recipe, arrange as follows: Place the wool in the center slot. Place the 8 sticks in all of the remaining slots.

Craft the painting. To remove it to your inventory once it is crafted, shift click or drag.

Hanging the Painting

Right click on a wall or other flat, vertical surface, while holding the painting. It will hang where you've clicked. The type of painting that will hang is completely random and you'll get a different picture each time. Paintings can only be placed on flat vertical surfaces.

Know what to do if you want to get the painting to fill up an area: Mark the bounds using any solid block. Place the painting in the lower left corner. Expect the painting to expand to the top right corner, to try to fill the space.

Note that the direction your painting faces affects its brightness. Paintings placed facing north/south are brighter. Paintings placed facing east/west are darker.