Being a professional photographer and a hobbyist painter i have always been lucky to have an abundance of reference photographs to work from.
One day i had an artistic urge to paint a puppy but i had no means to photograph one. I started looking for public domain images but none were the quality i wanted. I could purchase images from stock photography sites but the trouble is when you want to sell your art work afterwards, most companies will only do this on an extended license (The price tags started at a whopping £70 per image).
This is how my Etsy shop, ArtistReferenceUK came into existence, i have more photographs than i could ever