But what if you just start to create a picture??
Then you use a TBitmap (or any other similar class) if you're doing it in code or use a TPaintBox if it's drawn by the user (like, say, in a "Paint" kind of program).
Painting in a TImage's canvas is really no better than painting in, say, a TPanel's canvas and it's, indeed, worse because at least the TPanel does have an initialized canvas while a TImage doesn't until either you load a Picture or initialize it yourself. And worse of all: as soon as you try almost any operation with picture (for example to save whatever you've just drawn) the TImage canvas is redrawn to synch with the Picture, so you lose whatever you draw there.
I'm not saying it can't be done and, indeed, there are lots of code snippets out there using that "solution"; I just think that taking all into account it's not reallya good idea unless one does know
exactly what one's doing and, more important,
why.
IMHO, of course ...