✔️ Create Custom Paintings In Minecraft JAVA ✔️ Use Any Photo!

Hey everybody, it’s UnderMyCap. Today I’m going to show you how to add a custom texture to Minecraft paintings using a resource pack. I only discovered this recently, but it’s really simple—and a lot of fun.

I also have a blog post where you can download the documents I use, but I still recommend following along here, since it’s often easier to see the steps as you go.

What This Looks Like In-Game

In my world, I’m using PureBDCraft (kind of). More specifically, I’m using their painting style. When I place down paintings, you’ll notice they have a unique look compared to the default Minecraft paintings.

I’ve only customized one of the painting images for this tutorial, and I replaced it with my logo. The cool thing is that it behaves like a normal painting: it renders properly at a distance and works just like any other in-game painting.

What You’ll Need

You’ll need a resource pack to use as a base—ideally a high-quality one. In this example, I’m using PureBDCraft (512x, MC1.14). Don’t worry too much about the numbers; it’s just the resolution and version info.

Once you’ve chosen a resource pack, add it to your resource packs folder so you can work with it.

Preparing the Resource Pack Folder

Open your resource pack folder. To make this pack only affect paintings (and leave everything else alone), navigate to:

assets > minecraft > textures

Inside textures, delete everything except the painting folder. This ensures your edited pack will only override painting textures and won’t accidentally overwrite other textures in the game.

How Resource Pack Priority Works

This is one of the best parts about doing a focused override like this. You can stack resource packs in Minecraft:

If your custom pack is on top and it only contains painting textures, Minecraft will use those paintings from your pack. For everything else (grass, blocks, items, etc.), it will fall through to the next resource pack in the list, and eventually to the default textures.

So you can keep using your favorite full resource pack, and just layer your custom paintings on top.

Editing the Painting Textures

After you’ve trimmed the resource pack down to only the painting textures, open the painting texture files. You’ll see all the painting images included in the pack.

I’m going to go through them and edit them until they’re blank, so I can replace them with my own images.

Once that’s done, you’ll notice the textures are empty, but the filenames are still there. I recommend not renaming the files—just replace the images while keeping the same names. That way, everything stays compatible and Minecraft can still find each painting correctly.

Adding Your Own Images (Using Photoshop)

Now it’s time to add custom images.

If you can, use Photoshop (or another image editor). It makes the whole process much easier for placing, resizing, and exporting your images cleanly.

In Photoshop, you can draw your own custom art or bring in images from elsewhere. For example, I’ll do a quick test by drawing something with a marker brush, then saving it over one of the painting files.

If you want to use a photo instead, open the image you want, copy it, paste it into the painting template, resize it as needed, and save it over the painting texture file.

Testing the Resource Pack in Minecraft

Once your images are saved into the painting texture files, open Minecraft and load your world.

Then go to:

Options > Resource Packs

Select your custom resource pack and click Done. Minecraft will reload textures, and you should see your updated paintings in-game.

If your pack doesn’t appear in the list, that usually means something is wrong with the folder structure or resource pack files. This is one reason I didn’t modify the base pack structure beyond removing unnecessary textures—it helps everything stay valid and easy to load.

Common Mistake: Using the Wrong Base Pack

One warning: make sure you’re editing and applying the correct resource pack. If you accidentally apply a broken or incomplete pack (or remove more than you intended), the rest of your game textures can look completely ruined.

When set up correctly, though, you’ll see your custom paintings appear properly—like the custom photo I added (for example, a bedrock image) showing up as an actual in-game painting.

Wrapping Up

That’s basically it. Once you’ve set up the resource pack to only include the painting textures, you can swap in any images you want and load them into Minecraft as custom paintings.

If you enjoyed this, please leave a like and consider subscribing if you’re new. I’m sorry I haven’t been posting much lately—I haven’t been feeling great, and you can probably hear it in my voice.

My socials and website are in the description, and I’d really appreciate it if you comment what you want me to do next. Hope to see you in the next one.