An excellent source for art (photo, illustration & animation) is [link|http://www.istockphoto.com/index.php|iStockphoto]. Prices begin at a buck per image (lo-res, suitable for the sort of use you have in mind), to three and five dollars for medium and high, respectively. Most of the "Diebold Variations" were built around iStock pictures. As to "low end easy art tools," if I didn't already own Photoshop I would make haste to acquire "Photoshop Elements" for about a c-note—by all accounts it's an excellent value (unlike the execrable "Photoshop LE" of the 1990s), and it would certainly suffice for anything you might essay in the web graphic line.
cordially,