i've been messing around with some graphics and stuff, painting pixels onto forms... now my weird brain's decided i want to paint pixels straight onto the screen, without putting a form up...

i can do it fine copying the contents of the screen to a form.. but i want to paint directly onto the screen, so that i can still click icons and such around it...

i've tried getting the desktop window's dc, and using that as an argument for the ellipse function (which works fine on a form) but it just doesn't paint anything..

a friend who programs in delphi's told me i need to create a "canvas" first, but i'm lost...

thanks in advance for any hints or help