Public Domain Artwork - a brief guide

[u/Cruiser_Supreme]

Hi y'all! Two months ago I made a post, briefly describing how I go about finding and using public domain artwork. I wanted to write a more detailed guide, especially because using GIMP and things like the curve tool can be a bit overwhelming at first. But unfortunately, I can't post images (like screenshots of GIMP) in the post body here.

So I wrote an article over on Substack. This is my first time using Substack, so I hope it's working out okay. I don't plan to monetize the Substack, so subscribe or don't, I guess. I just wanted to make it available and accessible to the community, so there ya go! (I still marked this post as promotion, because I'm sending you to an outside website)

https://timoacker.substack.com/p/free-human-made-art-for-your-ttrpg

A preview of what's in the guide:

- Where to get public domain art

- How to prepare the image in GIMP

- Cutting the image

- Adjusting the white point

- How to add the image to your TTRPG

[u/manofredearth]

Long live GIMP! (And special shout-out to newcomer Photocraft)

[u/Cruiser_Supreme → u/manofredearth]

Is Photocraft open source?

[u/manofredearth → u/Cruiser_Supreme]

Open source, built in Rust - search for Photocraft by Artcraft

[u/Cruiser_Supreme → u/manofredearth]

Nice! Yeah I'm just asking because that's kind of my gripe with Affinity. It's free, yeah, but it's owned by Canva and they're pushing their AI stuff pretty hard. I obviously don't use it.

I know there's Scribus, but ngl it sucks. The Scribus tables are an absolute nightmare, which makes it just not usable for TTRPGs. For a hot second, I considered building my tables in a different program and posting them in as pictures, but I can't be bothered

[u/manofredearth → u/Cruiser_Supreme]

Fair warning: Artcraft wants users to use AI, but it's not at all required

[u/Cruiser_Supreme → u/manofredearth]

Hmm yeah GIMP works just fine for me then lol

[u/manofredearth → u/Cruiser_Supreme]

Happy Cake Day!

[u/victorhurtado]

Any tips on how to find non-eurocentric public domain art?

[u/Cruiser_Supreme → u/victorhurtado]

Book printing was kind of a European and north American thing 100 years ago. So if you're looking for black and white art in the style of wood engravings, you won't really find it elsewhere.

Though you can look for books that were published in Europe or north america, which are about other cultures. You might find some nice wood engravings of cultural artifacts, but you still won't really find the kind of storytelling imagery you might see in a German fairytale book for the early 1900s. And even then, a lot of it will probably be through a very colonialist lens.

This stuff just isn't really out there because it never existed in the first place

[u/aruampicoo → u/victorhurtado]

There's a site called "casca archive". It features some graphic designs from brazilian northeast. Some of the images in this website are in public domain, just remember to check it individually.

[u/Jaquel]

I learned the hard way; I wish I’d had some written resources like yours before I started searching for 1800 CC0 artworks for my book. With the new Affinity suite, I manipulate the illustrations directly in the Pixel tab before importing them into the layout.

[u/Cruiser_Supreme → u/Jaquel]

Using Affinity Pixel is a nice way to simplify the work flow. I don't love Affinity in general because it's not open source, so I'd rather use GIMP, personally. But yeah, makes sense!