QPainter can operate on any object that inherits the QPaintDevice class.

The common use of QPainter is inside a widget's paint event: Construct and customize (e.g. set the pen or the brush) the painter. Then draw. Remember to destroy the QPainter object after drawing. For example:

 void SimpleExampleWidget::paintEvent(QPaintEvent *)
 {
     QPainter painter(this);
     painter.setPen(Qt::blue);
     painter.setFont(QFont("Arial", 30));
     painter.drawText(rect(), Qt::AlignCenter, "Qt");
 }