Watercolors hides faults of hand held flashless photos

The problem.  Flash photography for events is doubly annoying.  In the first place, if you are photographing peformers it can be annoying for them. In the second place, the distance of the flash illumination is actually rather short so more than likely the picture is worse with the flash than without.  But without the flash the photo can be 1/8 of a second eposure on my camera.  I can try to steady the camera but that doesn't always work.  Even the best of photos are fuzzy.

So it was with an eye of insight that I noticed a few people water coloring their photographs.  The watercolor effect of Microsoft Paint Editor seems to hide a multiple of sins, especially the fuzzy problem.  Here are a few photographs made nicer by a little watercolor on the paper.

But the above were cases where there was good lighting.  If there is poor lighting, the problem is compounded by the darkness of the 1/8 shot as well as the blurr.  The following photos were taken in a chruch.  I had to brighten the photo by 75% and then apply the watercolor effect.

So I think watercolor can compensate for flashless performance shots assuming that the illumination is relatively moderate, otherwise I'm still mostly out of luck.  I suppose I'll need to come up with a simple tripod solution.  Does anyone know of a good tripod like thing that also doubles as a convenient walking stick?