Public Domain Illustrations on Project Gutenberg
There are great resources for public domain ttrpg art out there (Jalopy Design, Yochai Gal's) but so far I haven't seen anyone mention Project Gutenberg as a source of visual art. PG has some (mixed-quality) scanned illustrations in some of its novels, and afaik they're fair game for use without attribution.
Unfortunately, there isn't a way to specifically search for novels with illustrations, so most of these were found picking through promising-looking books by hand. Feel free to leave a comment with additional finds below.
Update: Haunted Spice Trade Association has a post on using Google to search PG for images. I think I slightly prefer the serendipity of the manual search, but this is extremely useful.
Sci-fi/fantasy illustrations
- Omega: The Last Days of The World -- mostly poor scan quality, but there's an interesting mix of ruins, apocalyptic destruction, retro-futurism, and purely fantastical stuff.
- The Worm Ouroboros -- a few gorgeous, striking, high-res illustrations.
- The Goddess of Atvatabar -- poor resolution but the images are wonderfully strange and fantastical -- see especially the flora & fauna midway down.
- At the Mountains of Madness -- low res but there are some really nice high-contrast images of the Elder Things' city that are very dungeon-y. I bet these would look great as vector images.
- Conan -- a few of R.E. Howard's stories have scanned illustrations, most at least have the (often NSFW) Weird Tales covers. The following had at least one seemingly usable illustration:
- Children's Books and their Illustrators -- all over the place, but it has some nice fairy tale illustrations.
- A Princess of Mars -- washed-out scans but the art is very technically detailed. Unfortunately, none of the other ERB books I looked at had much except for the nice one inserted above from Fighting Man of Mars.
- The Princess and the Goblin -- mostly of (slightly uncanny-valley) children but there are some fun goblins in some of them.
- The Rheingold and Valkyrie librettos -- some great high-res Arthur Rackham scans.
- Polish Fairy Tales
- Sinbad the Sailor -- small but lovely color plates by Edmund Dulac
- Selected etchings of Piranesi 1 and 2
- Japanese Fairy Tales
- Viking Tales -- these have a very 'clean' line-art look that could translate well into a modern book.
- Complete Dore Bible Illustrations -- Gustave Dore is in every public domain collection but it seems like not all of his bible illustrations made it into the more common sources. Washed-out scans but decent resolution.
- Fictitious and Symbolic Creatures in Art
- The Scarlet Plague
- The Daughter of the Dawn -- a few neat images of giants and dungeon-like spaces in this one (but note that the book itself looks pretty racist)
- Etidorhpa -- some of these go hard af: mushroom trees, prehistoric monsters, weird faceless guy. Biggest downside is that 90% of the illustrations have a balding and very Victorian-looking guy in them.
- White Spot -- just some cute retro aliens
- A Voyage to the Moon
- Armageddon 2419 -- a couple very cheesy retro-sci-fi pictures
- Galactic Patrol -- this one has some nice illustrations of spacemen battling dino-aliens
- Curiousities of the Sky -- auroras, galaxies, retro star-charts
- Edison's Conquest of Mars -- godawful scan quality but excellent raygun gothic aesthetics here
- The Sea Fairies
- The Oz Books
- Ancient Egyptian Art -- nice ruins and schematics
- History of Grotesques in Art -- all the bizarre stone idols you could ever need, plus some nice monsters and text decorations
- Decorative Illustrations of Books Old and New
- Under the Witches' Moon -- not a ton here, but a workable wizard
- Granny's Wonderful Chair & Its Tales of Fairy Times -- more standard fairy tale stuff
- Sandman's Rainy Day Stories
- The Norwegian Fairy Book -- a couple nice color plates
- Folk Tales from Tibet
- The Irish Fairy Book -- gorgeous, high-contrast duotone prints by George Denham. Lots of dragons and whatnot
- Ivanhoe -- quite a few color illustrations. They're a bit low-res and perhaps a bit hokey 'merrie olde englande', but they're technically quite good and there are a few gems (imo)
- The Last Crusade -- one illustration of a raygun gothic space marine
- Tales of King Arthur and the Round Table
- Chivalry -- moody, decadent Pre-Raphaelite-ish femme fatales
- The Mysterious Stranger -- N.C. Wyeth illustrations, including a fantastic wizard
Castles & Maps
- Medieval Military Archicecture in England vol. 1 and vol. 2 -- Buckets of nice-quality maps and illustrations of different types of castle.
- Castles and Chateaux of Old Navarre -- mostly small images, but some pretty watercolors. Many of these read as more 'fantasy' than other castle illustrations. Also some cool Basque traditional dress.
- Ancient Castles of Ireland
- Castle of Terror has one (1) very campy illustration of a classic pulp dungeon
- British Castles maps aren't as rich, but some nice color illustrations
- The Castles and Abbeys of England -- lots of moody ruins & landscapes, plus some armor, knights, NPCs. Lots of good stuff here.
- Early Normal Castles of the British Isles -- predominantly top-down maps
History
- Ancient Armour and Weapons in Europe
- Armour & Weapons
- Arms and Armor of the Pilgrims
- The Byzantines -- some really good stuff here -- high-contrast woodcuts with tons of character, including a really cool one of some iconoclasts pulling down a statue.
- Medieval Byways -- the scan quality isn't all one could hope for, but there are tons of wonderful slice-of-life illustrations here, including a great one of a little demon in a potion flask.
- Life on a Mediaeval Barony
- Scenes and Characters of the Middle Ages -- simple, charming illustrations of people. These would work great at small sizes, as margin illustrations or in a dossier of minor NPCs.
- Heroines of the Crusades -- balanced representation can be tough with public domain art. This one has a couple illustrations of women weilding weapons.
- Finger-ring lore
Other
These are books that aren't as directly applicable to DIY RPG illustration but might be useful for sourcing decorations, collages, etc.
- Early Woodcut Initials
- The Practice and Science of Drawing
- Monograms & Ciphers
- Industrial Arts Design-- in amidst the pages and pages of furniture schematics are some cool art-nouveau jewelry designs and motifs
