How do you source material for collages? What repositories of art do you know?

[nobo]

So there's the "classical" sense of a collage, where you just assemble a lot of absurd things and go, "Tada!" But what I'm imagining is very calculated cuts.

Here's a good example of what I'm talking about:

https://blamensir.neocities.org/monastery/infirmary

From different pieces of art, this person assembled a visually coherent place that is brought to life. You've probably seen other web collages like this.

I don't have to tell you that that the image search capability of the Internet is greatly reduced compared to what it used to be. It's very difficult to find things that aren't paywalled or AI generated. You don't ever have the ability to search by date anymore in some cases.

So to make something like this, you really just need to know places where you can source and catalog lots of art in similar style.

Luckily this person has done us the great favor of citing all their sources.

https://blamensir.neocities.org/monastery/library/codex/sources

So here's my question. What other repositories of art do you know about?

[beetledragon3869]

Oooooh I know this one! I've used several of the following in collages.

- The Met's Open Access allows netizens access to over 492,000 images of public domain artwork from its collections, INCLUDING basic information about the works if you're interested in their history!

- The Smithsonian has something similar, with even more content to it - not only does their Open Access include images for collage, but several different FREE dev tools, 3d models, and open research datasets in a variety of disciplines.

- Same with the Library of Congress. They have rights-free images, maps, and movies sorted by a variety of topics, "from Classic Children’s Books and Disability Awareness to Dragons, Football, Jazz, and Shoes."

- I haven't used this one yet, but the Public Domain Image Archive looks promising, and there's even an "Infinite Random View" where you can just scroll through random images until you find something you like.

I hope this helps in some way! I love collages (and the site you linked to - SUCH a cool concept for a webpage, love their work!) and want to help other people love them too.

[nobo]

Oooooh I know this one!

Amazing post

I didn't think about this but that's really the common thread: museum web exhibits and public domain stuff. If you're plugged into those you could find what you're looking for by various themes. For example the blamensir website is looking at exhibits of medieval manuscripts; that's why they match.

So if you wanted to do something similar, you would come up with a similar theme that there might be an exhibit on and then find it. Or maybe the other way around: browse museum sites until you find the right theme.

[nobo]

Okay, I found a really good one while researching tools for making realistic heraldry and coat of arms.

https://www.heraldicart.org/

This site has so much art that you could use if you were going for something in this style.