Over 10,000 Pages of Royalty Free Illustrations!

Whilst digging for source material for illustrations for a book I'm working on, I came across this treasure:
British Library Flckr
It's 10,238 pages of old illustrations and maps that have been released for public use.

I don't know if/how well you can search through it for specific material, but I thought this would be a good resource for any artists out there!

Thanks, this is awesome

a reply to: ladyvalkyrie

Nice find!

Wow, tons of illustrations! Beautiful!

I do a lot of art deco stuff on the side (that ya'll never really see here). Stuff that would include the flourishes, fleurs, vines, etc. I can draw it all from scratch, but my God does that take time. I can download a lot of brushes....but even with that I end up with too much repetition for my liking.

The images on there, however, have countless designs that will make fantastic brushes.

Thank you very much for sharing.

Sorry for the delay. I had to pick up my kids from school.

It seems that you do need/have to make a Yahoo account. But that was relatively painless. I'll browse through and find interesting stuff. Such as...

"Thou shalt labor for peace and plentie"

There is a TON of borders/embellishments/illuminated alphabet type stuff.

originally posted by: bigfatfurrytexan
Thank you very much for sharing.

Thank the British Library as well, which my UK taxes help support
...just saying.

Ooo...St. Michael! This would make a good tiny tattoo!

This would be cool to print out on a canvas, for kitchen decor. Or even print out like a label and put it on an old tin.

OLD political cartoon!

originally posted by: grainofsand

originally posted by: bigfatfurrytexan
Thank you very much for sharing.

Thank the British Library as well, which my UK taxes help support

...just saying.

Nah, screw those guys. I only want to thank ladyvalkyrie.

a reply to: bigfatfurrytexan

Lol fair one, I love your honesty, you can thank me and other UK taxpayers for whoever the British Library is employing in their digital media department instead then.

Lady thou arte a true Valkrie.....

a reply to: ladyvalkyrie

that is quite a fantastic dragon image.

originally posted by: grainofsand
a reply to: bigfatfurrytexan

Lol fair one, I love your honesty, you can thank me and other UK taxpayers for whoever the British Library is employing in their digital media department instead then.

You are right that someone had to scan all this stuff in the first place but...
according to the article where I found this, these actual images are posted by a Bot.

The project, started in 2013, uses the library’s “Mechanical Curator” to randomly choose images or curiosities from public domain books in its digitized collection, which includes over 65,000 books from the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries. The Mechanical Curator was created in the Library’s own lab, and you can see it in action on a Twitter bot, which publishes an image every hour.

Original Article

....but for sure, thank you to the UK taxpayers! My eyes have gone all fuzzy from staring at the plethora of rad stuff from the British Library for the past few hours!

a reply to: ladyvalkyrie

That is a wonderful image.Thanks so much for sharing!