You can manually attach brushes to existing CV or EP curves, in effect, turning your curves into Paint Effects strokes.

When you attach paint effects brushes to curves, you can also attach the curves to a polygon mesh or NURBS surface. This lets you easily orient your brush strokes relative to their target mesh’s or surface’s normals, as well as have them deform with their target mesh or surface. For more information, see Attach brushes to curves.