Painter IX Textures? (Snake Scales)

[Wildone]

I've been using Painter 7 for several years now and finally decided to move on up to Painter IX. It's a little akward for me to get used to the brushes it's a little differant. I've been hearing alot about using textures in painter IX and IX.5 so my main question is. How to go about using textures for a specific image? For instance I am trying to use some really cool snake scales on a snake as part of a poster type image. So what would I need to go about doing to get that effect?
Also does anyone have any tips for the watercolors and oils on rendering scales from freehand.