Fine Art and Illustration: Finding and using images

• You will need to correctly reference all the images you use in order to comply with academic regulations
• Copyright is an issue you need to consider separately, depending on which images you are using for which purposes (see the copyright guidance on this page, especially the UoG Activities page)
• Nearly all image licences, including those for images which are free to use, require you to provide appropriate attribution even if you have permission to use the image in your work
• Work which you publish beyond just an assessment submission (even just on your blog or webpage) is likely to need more careful attention to copyright
• These issues will become even more important to you as your own images are used by others - you will want them to credit you correctly and potentially to pay you an appropriate usage fee

• Cite them Right online
• UoG copyright support
• UoG copyright information: activities
• Best practices for attribution: Creative Commons
• Copyright guidance from the AOP (Association of Photographers)

If you are including a number of images in your work it is standard practice to also include a list of images.  You should caption and number each image as I have done with the images on this page, and then create a list of all the images with full Harvard referencing details, in numerical order.  This is particularly important with longer pieces of work and your dissertation.  Different courses have different requirements so please consult your tutors if you have any queries.

These tools will usually allow you to filter your results by specific licences or usages to help you to comply with copyright. You will need to reference all images, regardless of the copyright licence

• Unsplash - images on this page have been taken from Unsplash
• Google Image Search - to filter your results go to Tools/Usage Rights
• Google Advanced Image Search
• Openverse (Previously Creative Commons search)
• MorgueFile

These are just some of the many image resources available online. Try looking at museum and gallery websites to find good quality images. But note: you are responsible for checking the licence and copyright status of any images you choose to use.

• Artstor
  More than 1.3 million freely accessible images, videos, documents, and audio files from museums, archives, libraries, and faculty collections.
• British Cartoon Archive
  The BCA gives free access to more than 125,000 fully-catalogued cartoons.
• Europeana
  A collection of digitised Museum, Gallery, Library, and Archival media from all across Europe (To search for licensed content, use the filter 'Can I use this?')
• Google Arts & Culture
  features content from over 2000 leading museums and archives who have partnered with the Google Cultural Institute. It provides a variety of routes into finding images, allowing for more serendipity than a direct search
• New York Public Library Digital Collections
• RIBApix
  All of the images on the site can be licensed or purchased. Low resolution images can be downloaded for non-commercial private study or research by registered users
• VADS: online resources for visual arts
  These resources are free to use for educational purposes
• Vogue Archive: Proquest
  A searchable archive of American Vogue, from the first issue in 1892 to the current month, reproduced in high-resolution color page images. Pages, advertisements, covers and fold-outs have been included

You will want to consider ways in which you can protect your own work and manage your intellectual property as you develop your professional practice

• How copyright protects your work - from gov.uk
• Share your work - how to use Creative Commons tools and licences
• Watermarks - guidance from the UK Copyright Service
• DACS - Established by artists for artists, DACS is a not-for-profit visual artists’ rights management organisation. Contains general information and guidance as well - go to the Knowledge Base for FAQs, factsheets and documentation

I will be updating the images on this page at the end of each semester.  If you would like your work included, watch this space to find out more about when and how to submit your work, the themes and how the work will be chosen.

Reverse image searches will help you to find the source of an image, so that you can identify where it came from and who owns it, understand better any copyright implications and correctly reference it

• Google reverse image search - follow the device-specific instructions here
• Tineye reverse image search
• Unsplash - select Visual Search

Different sites are also experimenting with ways to search for images by colour

• Europeana Colour Explorer
• Tineye Multicolr

You can search or browse for books containing images on Library Discovery. Some tips below.

• search for the name of an artist, illustrator or photographer to find books including their works
• add the phrase "pictorial works" to your search to specify books containing images. For example search for women AND "pictorial works"
• When you have found a book of interest, browse the shelves to find others nearby. You can browse the shelves virtually on Library Discovery by clicking on a book title and scrolling to the bottom of a book record

Note: you will need to reference all images you use in your work, and take note of the copyright advice on this page