I’ve had so much fun making many many paintings this past weekend using the Assisted Painting method I showed you all in the last issue of the zine. In a few hours time I whipped up a batch of 5 paintings. They are all pretty small (4×4″ each) and I’m going to slip them in the ArtVend machine at the local coop here in town. It’s been a really fun series to work on and hopefully they’ll sell and I’ll just HAVE to make some more :)

I was able to source some great images using a few public domain image searches, which are pretty handy for all kinds of projects we art and craft folk like to work on. Not just Assisted Paintings, but also just about any kind of paper art. You can also use them to cut out silhouettes for fabric decals and even to be the basis for a knit chart or embroidery pattern.

Me, I opted for a winter theme and searched for “winter” which then got me on the trail of dog sleds and snow cats somehow. I freaking love this picture of this fat cat. And how can I not think of Jak when I see these dogs in the snow.

Wikipedia has a great entry on using public domain images along with a long list of resources of where they can be found. I highly recommend checking out this list. If you are going to do something for personal use and not for commercial use, check out the Life Magazine Photo Archive on google. Amazing! I have to say, such a joy to play with.

If you go to Flickr, you can use their advanced search tool to include only images that have a creative commons license:

And always, make sure to do your research and make sure the images you are using – especially if you are using them for commercial purposes – are actually public domain. Unfortunately, just because someone states it is, doesn’t make it so.