In computational terms, a low resolution version of an image is almost by definition ‘simpler’, with fewer colours and details intact, but it seems like it would be much harder to do a convincing 1:1 replication of it in a painting compared to recreating a ‘clean’ HD version.

Or am I way off the mark? 😆 I’m not a painter, obviously. Seems like getting all of those weird JPEG artefacts right would be something of a novel skill for a traditional painter (or even a digital painter, for that matter).