How many of you spend a part of your day drawing pictures? I suppose it depends on how old you are and what kind of job you have, but here at Lerner, editors and production editors don’t typically do any drawing apart from a few stray doodles.

That all changed when we started working on the brand-new series Ready, Set, Draw! Sketches of dogs, cats, horses, and much more suddenly abounded as we attempted to follow the instructions in the books. We wanted to get a sense of the difficulty level of the drawings and ensure that an elementary student could expect to create a reasonably accurate drawing by following the step-by-step instructions.

While we may not all be destined for careers as illustrators, here are a few of our masterpieces: A dachshund from Dogs You Can Draw. A superhero from Cool Boy Stuff You Can Draw.

A figure skater from Cool Girl Stuff You Can Draw.

The drawings all begin with a few basic lines and shapes, which readers build on to create the final drawing. As you can see, the final step of adding color to the drawing really makes a big difference! And I’m firmly convinced that if we can do it, so can you!