L.A. Garnett – Author

Artists and authors talk a lot about cultivating inspiration — hell, it was the subject of my own blog not two days ago. Creating art (writing included) is all about gathering information from our lives and the world around us and putting it through the ringer — what comes out on the other end is our final work, the distillation of our experiences transformed into something beautiful.

This is all well and good, when the artist in question goes through the proper channels. On Threads, and other forms of social media, I see a lot of discussion about proper crediting and how that factors into our writing and, especially, the promotion of our writing. Plagiarism is a huge topic of conversation, especially with AI art on the rise, and with the popularity of mood boards and other inspirational compilations we can easily open ourselves up to some serious copyright questions and often murky usage policies.

Something I try to do is only use images and videos for social media and other public posts that promote my work that either (1) I create or (2) are free to use and reuse. For anything that I don’t create myself, I use Pexels quite frequently as well as Canva, as I pay for a pro account and as long as you rework their compentent a bit, and “make it your own”, those can be used freely as well.

There are a lot of great resources for free images – the Smithsonian has millions of copy-right free images, as do other museums and libraries (the Library of Congress, National Gallery of Art, and New York Public Library are some of those), and I’ve found that a lot of sculpture and art that is in the public domain can really help me get the vibes across that I’m looking for in an inspirational post or collage.

There’s been a lot of talk recently about AI – that’s more than I am knowledgeable enough to get into for this piece. Right now, with where the technology is at, I personally do not feel comfortable using AI for any part of my writing process, or for the art involved in my books and promotion. There is just no way to ensure that it is going about its job ethically, without stealing work from talented artists who deserve the credit. I’m hoping that there is a future where an AI generator can pull exclusively from the public domain, as that might make the whole endeavor more ethical, but right now we aren’t there.

How do you go about gathering inspiration? What have you found to be the best resources for public domain or Creative Commons art? Let me know in the comments 🙂