GDAL C++ API: How to create PNG or JPEG from scratch

I'm new to GIS and GDAL. My question probably is very basic, but I couldn't find answer. May be I don't understand GDAL ideology.

I need to create raster images from scratch, for example, JPEG or PNG. Their drivers don't support Create function - only CreateCopy. What is the common technique of new files creation in this case?

In principle, I can try to create Tiff because its driver suports Create(). Next, I can use CreateCopy() for PNG or JPEG using this Tiff. But such method looks indirect and unnatural for me. Also I suppose that this procedure can be too memory hungry if rasters are large.

I dealt with some image libraries before, they usually provide direct and simple way of bitmaps creation. Could somebody show me right direction for GDAL?

Thank you in advance,

Alexei