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Newer brushes and libraries might not be recognized by older versions of software 
There are new brush definitions which are great for new CC users, but might not be available if you're on a project that is only for CS6.
Oh man, really? That's annoying because I haven't really used Illustrator before, but like photoshop I just assumed the brushes and little extra bits that came preloaded with the program would work with this computer. When I read the CS6 guide, it said these brush libraries came with the program, and considering the second brush in the overview lil drop down preset menu doesn't work, I feel like there is something more here...
Hypothetically if I update my software, would that change something?
If you can see in this screenshot, I have drawn brush stroke with the 5pt. round brush on the left, and the faint dotted line next to it is the brush stroke before release drawn with the charcoal feather brush. After I release it, it becomes invisible.
In this screenshot you can see the paths are getting made with these mysterious invisible brushes when I select the entire area, but unlike their friend the 5pt. round brush, they don't leave much of a mark.
Also my layers recognize a path has been made, but they do not have a visible line, only a path.
I hope this helps!
For comparison, the visible brush stroke...
...and the invisible one. I do not know what it up with that double square in the visible lines path section, but maybe that is connected.
And of course you can also do the following: Just click on that button 
that deletes all appearances. Then just click on a brush in the brushes panel.
I'm quite sure there is something applied to your paths which makes them invisible. Would love to find out. But if you want to go on painting, try the button.
Thank you for the file.
This is getting strange: I have no issues with your file.
It opened like this in Illustrator CS6 as well as CC.
We need to find the cause elsewhere.
First of all I would recommend to restart the computer. In many cases this fixes things.
Then you could try and copy the paths into a new file.
Then you could try and rebuild the preferences. From time to time they can just get corrupted.
How to set preferences in Illustrator
If all this still doesn't help:
Which system is it?
Did it ever work?
Do you get any errors when launching Illustrator?
Well, I think I made it worse aha...
So I first off restarted my computer and updated my long overdue software. Then I relaunched Illustrator and the problem was still there. Copying the paths into a new file didn't fix it either. So then I went to rebuild my preferences. I located my preference file and removed it like the tutorial said, but when I launched illustrator a new more foreboding error came up.
I have multiple times tried to relaunch illustrator but everytime this error pops up, even though I have put my preferences back from where they came. So, from at least what I've read it seems like I should reinstall this whole deal?
Also my system is a Mac OSX v10.9.5 and before I started fiddling with the preferences the only error I got was "ColorHarmony.aip error loading plugin"
And I'm not sure if it has ever worked, I have only started using the program recently and this problem of invisible brushes has been a continuous plague.
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