I have a situation wherein I have a bunch of JButtons on a GridLayout. I need each of the JButtons to have:

1. a background image (but retain the ability to keep the default button look if needed)
2. custom graphics drawn on top by other classes

I have no trouble with the background image, since I am using setIcon() but I am having problems drawing things on top of the background. At one point I was able to draw on top of the button, but after the button was clicked, the drawings disappeared. How can make the button keep this drawing state?

Basically, I need a way for my JButtons to have public methods that would allow another class to draw anything on it such as:

public void drawSomething() {
  Graphics g = this.getGraphics();
  g.drawOval(3,2,2,2);
  repaint();
}

or

public Graphics getGraphics() {
  return this.getGraphics();
}

then another class could do this:

button.getGraphics().drawSomething();

The latter is more what I am looking for but the first is equally useful.

Is there any way to go about this? Also, overriding the parent class method paintComponent() doesn't help since I need each button to have different graphics.