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Illustration: Digital Resources

Illustration Collections

British Cartoon Archive

The British Cartoon Archive (BCA) is dedicated to the history of British cartooning over the last two hundred years.

Zine Resources

Use this list as a starting point for research on zines and as an introduction to major zine collections. It will help you locate zines and materials about creating them in other libraries and online databases. 

Art Journal Databases

Animation practice - Bloomsbury Visual Arts Hub

The Animation Practice collection on Bloomsbury Visual Arts huboffers a comprehensive selection of 53 practice-focused titles from the CRC Press imprint and Routledge. It encompasses both traditional techniques and technical skills, covering pre-production, production, and post-production techniques - from sketching, storyboarding, and directing a story, to character design, rigging, and lighting.

Discover classic texts such as Drawn to Life: 20 Golden Years of Disney Master Classes Volume 1 and Volume 2  by Walt Stanchfield, and Directing the Story by Frances Glebas.

Browse the title list

Explore the Collection

Image Resources

It is important to use good quality images in your work. This means not only high resolution but good provenance. This refers to the source of the image. Is there accurate, authoritative information about the object? For example:

  • Who is the creator?
  • When was it made?
  • Where can it be found?
  • What is it made of?

Instagram and Pinterest have lots of images, but information about the pictures is often very sketchy. Try to use good quality books, museums, galleries and archives or their websites.

These are links to some good quality sources of images:

Art Collections in London

Victoria & Albert Museum

The world’s leading museum of art and design

National Portrait Gallery

Art gallery in London that houses a collection of portraits of historically important and famous British people

TATE

Tate is an institution that houses, in a network of four art galleries, the United Kingdom's national collection of British art, and international modern and contemporary art. 

Hayward Gallery

Art gallery within the Southbank Centre