In this massive list of resources I will be sharing my favourite websites for ready-to-use art along with some bonus tips & tricks on how you can use them in your worldbuilding on World Anvil.
Free Stock Image Websites
Unsplash
(Licence) – all CC0
For quick and easy to find worldbuilding imgaes, TJ has curated collections of images based on the World Anvil templates: View Collections
Pexels
(Licence) – all CC0
Pixabay
(Licence) – all CC0
Pxhere
(Licence) – all CC0
Wikimedia commons
(Licence) – double check individual image licences!
CC Search
(Licence depends on search result filters)
Public domain & historical images
These are my favourite places to dig through for historical images like fine art paintings, manuscripts, ancient relics, swords, treasures, and cultural items in daily life!
Artstor
(Check the image licence in the bottom right of the image’s page)
The British Library
(all public domain)
Cleveland museum of art
(licence appears beneath each image, and in the sidebar of image pages)
Met museum
(licence appears beneath image on the image’s page)
National Museum of African American History & Culture
(check the image licence shown on the image’s page)
Rawpixel public domain
(All CC0 in this section)
Public domain review
A great source of inspiration that may lead to other websites for CC0 art
Sketchfab cc0 collection
You can also embed 360º 3D models into your world on World Anvil using the [sketchfab:ID] BBCode tag and the end part of the Sketchfab url. For example, [sketchfab:57a57a99ce1f4e45adee5ae37a91f51b]. Read the codex article
Historical images on Unsplash
Did you know that many museums and libraries are sharing CC0 content on Unsplash now as well? Here are the ones I’ve been keeping tabs on:
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Thank you TJ! There are a lot of websites here I didn’t know of yet.
What are the licencing rules of the artwork of the WorldAnvil site itself? Is there any artwork I can use in my blog to highlight WorldAnvil?