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I love working with printable images and graphics in my art journals. I am by no means a fine artist at painting or drawing things realistically, but I love including images of objects and people in my journals. 

Today I thought I would share some sites where you can find free images you can use in your artwork.

Here are My Favorite Resources for Free Printable Graphics for Art Journals and Junk Journaling:

WikiMedia Commons:

I love Wikimedia Commons and a lot of the graphics I print out to use in my journals comes from there.

I especially love the Pearson Scott Foresman collection which is entirely in the public domain, which means you are free to use it however you like without worrying about copyright issues.

public domain images for art

Not everything on Wikimedia Commons is in the public domain however, so be sure when you use images that you check the licensing and copyright information when you find one you like!

OpenClipArt.org:

This is another one of my go-to sites, especially when in a clip art type of mood, though they have plenty of other images as well.

One of my favorite features of this site is everything is in the public domain and you can get items in vector format or png format in the print resolution you need.


Dover Publications Free Samples:

Dover is well known for their clip art and royalty free images they’ve been producing for years. If you’re not on their mailing list yet to receive free samples, you’ll want to be!

I know look forward to the email they send out every Friday. Poems, coloring pages, clip art…it’s all high quality and great for using in your art journal pages.

Dover publications also offers a lot of great books with royalty free images you can often enjoy in your different art and craft projects. Browse Dover Clip Art Books on Amazon.


Old Book Illustrations:

It’s no secret I love all things old books {see how I find old books here} – and this is a favorite website of mine just to browse through.

OldBookIllustrations.com has a great selection of all types of images for printing and very nicely organized for finding what you’re looking for also!


Reusable Art: 

Love this site! Reusableart has so many great images and they are very nicely organized and easy to find. The ease of use and great selection of curated images makes this one of my personal favorites.

The different categories and sections so whether you are looking for images of buildings or images of birds you are sure to find some beautiful free vintage images to use in your projects.


PublicDomainPictures.net: 

While mostly photographs, PublicDomainPictures.net also offers a lot of illustrations as well, and all of the images here are in the public domain, which means you can use them for a wide variety of different art applications and crafts.


The Graphics Fairy: 

I learned about The Graphics Fairy website from one of our wonderful readers here and I LOVE the great assortment of vintage images she offers. She also offers a premium subscription also that looks like a lot of fun to explore. She also offers lots of tutorials & ideas for fun creative ways to use the images.


Pixabay

Pixabay is another great website I love to explore for different images. There are a lot of great photos, illustrations and more that are in the public domain you can use different ways in your art.


The British Library Vintage Images on Flickr

The British Library’s page on Flickr has a few million images you can use for all sorts of different creative projects. Be sure to double check any known copyrights on items they post, but many of these images are free to use for a variety of different works. 


Any Sites You Love That I May Have Missed?

Do you have any other favorite sites you’d like to share where you can find downloadable images and graphics for your art journal projects? I’d love to hear about them in the comments section below!

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5 Comments

  1. Thanks for the awesome information. In addition, the New York Public Library has something like 180,000 free public domain images.

  2. freevintageillustrations.com is great for old pictures! also if you go to heritagetype.com and go to “free downloads” there are about 200 or so sets of old illustrations and they are all pngs that are already cut out and ready to use. Thanks so much for this article, I will be visiting the websites you suggested!

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