About 2 months ago, I posted my trip to have art printed on my Instagram Story. A few people reached out to me on where I had got the pieces from and I promised a blog post. Here it is a blogpost on where to find free art on the internet. I am so happy this is finally up.
Art is indispensable to the elevation of any space. If you are like me, you are decorating on a budget, art may seem far off budget but it doesn’t have to be. There are thousands if not millions of pieces of free and affordable art on the internet. Artists put their work in the public domain and copyright terms on artwork and photographs expire every year.
Here are some sites you can get art for free:
1. RAW PIXEL
Raw Pixel is wonderland for sourcing free art. With a huge selection of royalty- free images and public domain illustrations. Their resources span from posters to vintage patterns. They also have a premium subscription which gives access to all their resources for $3/N1500. Here are two images I love which I also had printed.
The graphics fairy has over 6,000 vintage images available for free. The imaged include photographs of plants, animals, clip art, antique graphics and travel posters. Here are a few images I love from there.
3. RETROGRAPHIK
Retrographik is an absolute favourite. They have a lot of paid images but also a good number of them are free. I go here often just for their great selection of art nouveau posters. They also have a great selection of vintage advertising posters; from movies to airlines. Their images are also super high resolution. Here are few images I love!
The public domain review is filled will all kinds of curiosities. It has art, graphics posters even books and poetry which are now in the public domain. Here are some great images.
Other good sources, are the Rijks Museum, Nasa Commons, Metropolitan Museum of Art, National Gallery of Art, the Library of Congress and even the New York Library’s Digital Collection. Some of these sites sometimes have a subscription fee to receive access to parts the high-resolution archives or singular images. A lot of these fees are usually affordable so if you have a few dollars to spare, it is usually worth it.
Printing the art was a breeze. I went in to Doculand in Ikoyi and requested the pieces be printed. You can find the closest Doculand or bulk printer next to you for this service. At their office, I picked out the thickness of paper I wanted and that was it. Printing 3 pieces of art in 3 sizes cost me less than N2000 which was fair. Click here for a quick video of how the experience went. I framed them in the picture frames I thrifted in this post . Here is a pretty picture of how they all looked after framing.
I’m sure this is is barely scratching the surface of free art available on the internet. Do you know any sites to find free art on the internet? Are you going to check any of these out? Let me know!
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