In art school there was a painting class that involved shooting a picture of a model, imposing a grid on an 8x10 of it, and then painting from it onto a 4x5-foot canvas with an identical grid. We were supposed to reproduce the photo square by square, with the proviso that each square was chosen at random during the process, albeit with an eye for composition. I never finished the picture, but what I ended up with was an interesting half-abstraction, which I've been running with ever since.