I suppose one could combine any number of topics into a single journal but my approach is more akin to the writers academic texts on very specific subjects when it comes to Art. The purpose of this particular "journal" (I'm not inclined to call my self a blogger as of yet) is to collect together images of both well known and more obscure works in sufficient size to serve as a source for study by drawing.
It is an old tradition perhaps but one not likely to be entirely lost any time soon in which the student/artist sits and looks at works by past and present masters and does hand drawn sketches in the process of examining the various attributes that make up the work. In days gone by this was generally a matter of the student carrying a sketch book into a museum for instance and sitting there looking at the work in question but in the modern digital age it is possible to do this without so much travel. I personally use both the traditional media and the digital when I'm in a mood to ponder say Pollock or Picasso and see no reason why a serious person cannot adapt Corel Painter or Adobe Photoshop to this purpose but I also recommend you consider visiting the actual originals whenever the chance is afforded.
The versions I select are chose more on the basis of resolution with the ideal of providing an image that would allow you to zoom in on details and zoom out to review the full sweep particularly on the large scale works such as Guernica or Mural. In this sense it is both a poor substitute for the original and an extra dimension in that the computer may allow you see details you couldn't see otherwise.
I'd encourage people with the inclination to add this to their regimen of art related activities and resources not so much to "copy" the masters but simply as a tool to use in search of ideas, technique, and inspiration. One might never actually duplicate the look or feel of Picasso but understanding the approach might lead to a new approach here or a different perspective there taking ones work in added direction essentially and it affords the opportunity for the "happy accident" methodology to unfold. Happy Accident is a circumstance wherein one is working on one thing such as a study of the editorial compositions Picasso used and by chance creates something entirely new in their own technique that is separate from the Picasso study and an addition to the tools of the student. You have these all the time as you develop of course but in doing these sorts of studies you gain both additional conceptions of art from the viewpoint of others as well as a potentially robust laboratory experiment environment.
Another thing I'd suggest to those with the programs and inclination is to feel perfectly free to download the images and open them in various programs and alter their appearance in different ways. An example would be to take a colorful work and change it to monotone in order to imagine what the original sketch might have been like. Another idea is when you see some element (detail) you are wanting to draw and taking it out of the web browser in order to enlarge it and see it better. Sometimes just changing the contrast or saturation a bit to be better viewed on your given computer, tablet pc, iPad, or smart phone for that matter is really all it takes to open up things that you might have missed in a work perviously.
By all means if you find it here feel free but I'd recommend that if you do create something and show or post it that you attribute the artist and the name of the work that inspired it. Even if it were a cave painting many thousand of years past it's copyright it is more of a question of good manners so to speak. There is no more shame in admitting to being influenced by say Matisse as a visual artist than there is in admitting to be influenced by Keith Richards as a musician it is in fact rather good form to admit it and it shows you have a serious knowledge of the subject.
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