I'm Looking For Free Graphics Websites

I’m looking for free/non-copyrighted websites where I can find images that I can carve in clay to make decorative tiles (that’s my current hobby). I don’t need to be able to download them (I just print the image itself and use the printed image to transfer to the clay).

Any suggestions?

Are you going to sell the tiles? Or are they just for personal consumption?

FWIW, I see people making fan-art of Nintendo sprites all the time (knitting & drawings), and I’m wondering if this falls under Fair Use. Plus, 8-bit designs are easy to recreate.

They started off being for personal consumption, so I didn’t care where I got the images from, but I’ve made so many now that I think I will have to sell them (or just stack them up on the shelves).

Look for images licensed under a Creative Commons license that allows commercial reuse. You can actually google-search for images with this licensing.

You can search for clip art with Google Image Search. Or you can buy very cheap clip art through iStockPhoto.com.

Recent find:
http://www.morguefile.com/

You can also search Flikr based on an image’s license, so look there for CC licensed images.

Google Image Search > Advanced Options > Search for what you want > Click the “Gear” in Upper Right > Advanced search > Change settings under usage rights

Wikipedia images are usually covered by Creative Commons or similar

Photos.com, but they’re watermarked until you pay, I believe.

morgueFile looks interesting, but I was afraid to click it…

And I would make double sure, but I agree that making clay reproductions of an image is not likely to be as verboten as just grabbing the image.

I just want to add that if you do use CC-licensed images (which is a great way to do this) and the final product is close enough to the original (i.e. it can be fairly considered a copy or derivative), please take a moment to credit the original artist. It could just be a simple one-line note you distribute with the product, or under its title/credits, etc.

CC means that somebody took the time to create a work and deliberately licensed it to the public to use provided they get credit, so please respect that :slight_smile:

(I say this as somebody who regularly both uses and produces CC-licensed work.)

Thanks for the suggestions.

Reply, I was thinking that if I ever ran into someone who had supplied an image that I had drawn in clay, my response would be, “Well, this is for you, then” and hand him the tile. :slight_smile:

That would be cool :slight_smile: