One of the greatest struggles as a collage artist is finding content to collage with. Navigating copyright laws and blurred lines can be a long process and ain't nobody got time for that! For convenience, we wanted to compile a handful of resources to help aid you in your creation. Note that while these are all digital resources, the images can be printed if you intend to create a cut and paste work!
The Heritage Library collects beautiful illustrations from the past which are 100% free to use. They carefully researched and edited the content to make it useable for you in private or commercial projects. Get inspired by their free illustration bundles and create gorgeous packaging, postcards and more.
Pexels provides high quality and completely free stock photos licensed under the Pexels license. All photos are nicely tagged, searchable and also easy to discover through their discover pages. These images have been released into the public domain by creators, so you run no risk of copyright infringement.
In February 2017, The Met introduced its Open Access Initiative which makes all images of public-domain artworks and basic data on all accessioned works in its collection available for unrestricted use under Creative Commons Zero (CC0). Now anyone can download, share, and remix images and data about artworks in The Met collection.
Welcome to Smithsonian Open Access, where you can download, share, and reuse millions of the Smithsonian’s images—right now, without asking. With new platforms and tools, you have easier access to more than 4.5 million 2D and 3D digital items from our collections—with many more to come. This includes images and data from across the Smithsonian’s 21 museums, nine research centers, libraries, archives, and the National Zoo.
Since the advent of the Internet, combined efforts of the finest archives, museums, and private individuals made tens of millions of public domain media files available online. GetArchive created PICRYL to make the world's public domain media available to anyone, anywhere, anytime, on any device. PICRYL already provides access to millions of public domain objects and growing.
GRANGER is an image licensing service that provides historical images for commercial and editorial use. They maintain an extensive, easily-searchable online image archive and provide a variety of research and image modification services.
Their online collections include hundreds of thousands of high-resolution still images covering a wide range of historical subjects sourced from photographs, engravings, and other physical media.