I was wondering if anyone who does a lot of etching and likes to
purchase digital art in vector format for printing and masking their
metals would care to share their favorite sources? While vector is
preferred, any single colored digital images can work.
I have found a few sites that have separate license options so you
can create merchandise with them but I’m not too thrilled with the
selections.
Istockphoto and shutterstock were OK, but I thought I might check
with you fine folks.
I am drawing some of my own on inkscape but I am very slow going
since I am new to making them.
Vectors are working well because the laser printers can easily print
1200 dpi and with the vectors when I size them down to print they
don’t have any jagged edges. I’ve been using the starch paper from
Pulsar that is much better than PnP blue. They sell a special foil
that you heat onto the transferred metal that seals the toner on your
metal. So your mask completely resists the etch. I am getting great
detail this way. So I’d like to find more sources of things to print.
Hi Rick, I have quite a few black and white pattern books from Dover
Books. Many have cd’s but with the older ones that don’t I just copy
the pattern I like then manipulate to size on my copier. There are
quite a few different genres to choose from. I easily have close to
40 of their publications that I use for etching.
Have you tried googling “copyright free line art” ? (I’ve not tried
this, but it’s a thought…)
There’s also the Dover range of copyright free images - various
books with thousands of images to use. Some are not line art though,
but many are, and some come on disk as well. I’m sure they must be
convertible to vector images - I confess I’ve never tried to do that
but I have scanned the images on pages or downloaded those on disk
and used them as they are for all kinds of applications.
I’ve looked at the Pulsar papers you mentioned in your post - they
sound awesome and I will definitely try them.
As others have mentioned, I use the Dover clipart libraries.
For graphic design stuff, I use vectorstock.com. It’s not free, but
the artwork is cheap, and the license is open. Haven’t looked for BW
solid artwork, but their search engine does let you pick that out,
so you should be able to find stuff. It’s much more modern than the
Dover books. Worth a look anyway.
If you search Amazon for Dover Books, under the graphic arts
sub-heading, then change the sort order to low to high, you can pick
up second hand copies for as little as 1c or 1p plus shipping.
Generally this is UKP 2.80 per book in the UK, even when the books come
from the US or Canada. I imagine shipping would be similar elsewhere.
Its a great way to build a collection of otherwise very expensive
jewellery design, technique and reference books.
Thank you everyone for the graphic sources. I can’t believe I never
ran across Dover publications with how large their library is. What
an incredible value as well. What an endless source of patterns one
could use for rolling mills just to think of one use.
They actually do have a specific Vector images library to chose
from.
for Dover Books, under the graphic arts