My company has a laser engraver, but we're having a hard time find
good, detailed, clip art to engrave. Items like the standard "Art
Explosion" are not detailed enough.  We would like to find, for just
one example, a mallard swimming in a pond with lilly pads and cattails
in the picture along with perhaps its own reflection.  This is just
one example, we would like to find all sorts of wildlife and holiday
type scenes.  Where can I find such a source????

Hello opy7,

And thanks for your question.

This has no easy answer as it requires personal judgement as to the
quality of the art and if it will meet your needs and desires. That
being said, here are some of my favorite places to search for clip art
and some notes about each.

First, are you familiar with Google Images? If not, this could be an
excellent source of clip art for you. Simply go to www.google.com,
select the images tab and type in keywords to begin your search.

CAUTION: 

Many of these images will be copyrighted and can not be used
commercially with permission from the owner or, in some cases, paying
a fee for use. This may also be the case on other images you may find
using the search techniques below.

I searched - mallard swimming - and got 54 hits. Some of these might
be appropriate for you. And though some of these will be jpg
photographic type of images, they can be downsampled and coverted to
lower color depths, lower resolution or even "line art" with many
photo image programs such as Adobe Photoshop (the best, but expensive)
or JASC Paint Shop Pro (excellent and affordable) at
http://www.jasc.com .

Next, I often visit Art today for my clip art needs at
http://www.arttoday.com/PD-0025713/ . Although this is a pay for use
site, they currently have a special at $7.95 for one week's use. You
can also subscribe by intervals of 3 months, 6 months or yearly.

I searched here for mallard swimming again, and got 1548 hits, though
many of these were responses to just the work swimming. However, the
first page alone showed several possibilities that might fill your
needs for this image. Searching "mallard swimming" produced no hits
and searching for duck found 1706 images, some again which might fill
the bill - so to speak.

There are a number of clip art search pages on the web, such as
Webplaces.com's Clip Art Searcher at http://www.webplaces.com/search/
. I have experienced mixed results with this and similar sites and
have both found what I desire or left frustrated. They are well worth
your effort to try and most often will lead you to sites of free clip
art for you to use.

I searched here for mallard swimming under Yahoo Clip Art (just one of
many choices) and found no hits. Mallard alone received 7 and most of
these could be purchased as a digital download online. For example:

Mallard Duck on a Reflective Lake
© Royalty Free/CORBIS
Image ID: CB001039 

Image Size: 
4" x 6" (640 x 427 pixels)
2" x 3" (256 x 172 pixels)

Resolution:  72 dpi 
Format:  jpeg 
Price:  $5.95 

is available here: 

http://r3.us.rmi.yahoo.com/rmi/http://shopping.corbis.com/referrals/wrk_jump.asp/rmivars%3ftarget=_top?linkid=1159&imageid=11437753

Some other pages I use to find clipart are:

The Clip Art Connection at
http://www.clipartconnection.com/mainframe.php3?page=gifofday.php3


and...

Web Clip Art at http://webclipart.miningco.com/

Finally, searching Google for "high quality" +clipart OR clip +art , I
found the following intersting sites:

Clip Art Gallery.com at http://www.clipartgallery.com/clipart.html

Free Clip Art (4.95 per month) at http://www.free-clip-art.com/


and Web Clip Art at http://www.webclipart.com/ which happens to also
have a discussion group at
http://www.webclipart.com/discussgroups.html , where people ask clip
art questions and help each other out.

This Google search above produced 86,900!!! hits. I'm sure that many
will not be appropriate for finding the quality of art you desire, but
many of the first 100 or so will probably be well targeted sites that
could well affer what you need. The results of the search can be found
here:

://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&q=%22high+quality%22+%2Bclipart+OR+clip+%2Bart

I did take a look at Art Explosion, as you mentioned, and I feel that
most, if not all of the sources listed above will provide you with
images of better quality and better resolution.

I hope this answer helps you to fill your clip art needs and perhaps
opens another possibility of converting photographic images into lower
color densities, lower resolutions or even line art to create the
images you require.

Best regards,

-=clouseau-ga=-

This was a deserving 5-star rating.  Very detailed with alot of
possibilities offered up.  Good job, clouseau-ga.

It seems to me that the best thing for this kind of project might be
vector art, if your setup is capable of handling vector-based
illustrations.

A terrific source of sign making related information- including
engraving & clipart is at http://www.letterhead.com

This is NOT a free clipart site, but "Letterville" is "inhabited" by a
wide variety of sign related professional, and there is an incredible
amount of info & help available!

Hello, 
  im also in the engraving industry and thought I may be able to help
on the subject. A while back I was in the same situation as you and
found that the only quality clipart I could find was very expensive.
Now You have to be carefull on ebay when it comes to clipart but there
are some quality clipart packages for a very good price and thats what
I found. I got 9 cds of vector clipart for about $30.00. I would say
that about 80% of the art is of good quality and would recomend them
"Extream graphics".
Mike http://www.laserengravedmemories.com