I'd never heard the
painting verse (which I quite like), but maybe it's a regional thing. In
Quebec, I learned it:
Un mille à pied
Ça use, ça use
Un mille à pied
Ça use les souliers
and then the elephant verse came afterwards. The above means "one mile by foot, that wears out one's shoes". Trust me, it's more idiomatic in French. Then both verses increase the number. A couple of girls from France whom I met on the very dull four-day train journey from Montreal to Vancouver told me that in France the verse has "un kilomètre". It's a lot of syllables to fit in, but hey, at least you can divide it by a hundred.