Somehow I lost the latest version of the cartoon that's today's post, so what's displaying now is a somewhat older version than what I intended. To add insult to injury, when I went into Corel Painter IX to try to redo some of the work (in particular a rather nice fern effect in the leaves of the palm that I had spent some time on), I can't find the brush selections that I was using anywhere. I had found, somewhere in the program, a nifty pallette of special-shaped brushes--almost like rubber stamps--in patterns like stars, thin curved lines, etc. Now I've explored every nook and cranny of the menus and toolbars that I can find, and I can't locate them anywhere. I would have thought that the pattern brushes were what I was looking for, but no. Searching the web hasn't helped: every search turns up sites trying to sell the software, not sites discussing how to use it. Corel's own tutorials don't give a hint. So now I've wasted almost two hours, with nothing to show for it. I know that I was able to use these brushes before: you can see them in the image that's on the site (e.g. the sand effect on the island), but right now if I had to do it again I'd be unable to reproduce that effect. Very frustrating. It looks ok, but it looked better before.