The PySide.QtGui.QPainter class performs low-level painting on widgets and other paint devices. The QPainter class provides all the functions to draw simple lines to more complex shapes. This class also provides settings to render quality images and supports clipping. The drawing is usually done within the widget's paintEvent() function. The drawing functionalities are placed in between the begin() and end() functions of the QPainter object. The QPainter object is initialized with the constructor, customized with some set functions, such as pen style and brush style, and then the draw function is called. The QPainter.isActive() function indicates whether the painter is active. The QPainter object is activated when QPainter.begin() is invoked and deactivated on calling QPainter.end().

The various drawings are performed using the QPainter's draw functions. The QPainter has three important settings that set the appearance of the drawing. They are as follows: