I really have no talent for the visual arts, but some of the tools now available allow me to pretend that I do. Give them a try...
ArtRage (which I discovered through Tim Weaver) is simply amazing. It simulates painting on canvas with a variety of methods (e.g. paint, crayon, pencil, etc.) I've been using it with a normal mouse, but if you have a tablet, you must try this.
CBN Selector is an easy-to-use image colorizer. The intended use is modifying a picture of a house or room to see how it would look with alternate colors. You define custom areas (e.g. garage door, window trim, carpet, curtains), then apply a new colors as you wish - the texture of the original is maintained. They have a great library of tutorials as well. Try this before you buy your next can of paint!
Paint.NET has just been updated to v2.0 (by way of Jason Barile.) A great Framework-based application supporting some fairly impressive (at least to a codemonger like myself) capabilities.
I've blogged about this before, but if you're interested in creating videos from your pictures, you should take a look at Microsoft's free Photo Story 3. You can create a decent video in just a few minutes (or, spend as much time as you'd like tweaking every little detail.)
All of these tools are freely obtainable.
Now, get out there and create!
-Chris