The VisualStyle provides you with another class, VisualStylePainter that facilitates the painting of a VisualStyle.
By creating a different visual style for each of the 3 states of an object (Normal, Hovered and Selected or Pressed) you can obtain easy animation and make your controls seem alive.
To add an additional level of graphical art, the VisualStyle can render 2 borders, an outer border and an inner border. Between the 2 borders a margin is rendered. Both borders can be 3D, flat with various widths and colors. The 3D borders can also be rendered by blending a certain color with the border default color, creating a more real effect.
Other features, like text alignment on vertical and horizontal, background image or color, font, make VisualStyle a very powerful tool. By playing around with the borders you can create very attractive controls.
The VisualPainter also allows you to paint the VisualStyle to a Bitmap and even in gray scale.
See Also
General Concepts:Drop-down Controls | General Concepts:Ambient Properties | Olvio.Windows.Forms.VisualStyle | Olvio.Windows.Forms.VisualStylePainter