My mom was a commercial artist in New York and Washington, D.C. in the 1960s. Here are a couple of her reference drawings for fashion figures. If you look at the women in the third image, you’ll find the origin of my “minimalist” drawing technique. She started me out drawing humans (well, the very first creature she taught me to draw was a pig), and regarding faces, she gave me the practical advice that one needn’t draw the entire chin, for example. Where the light hits it, you leave it blank or at most, a light line. Look at how she did this in the fashion ad. For eyes, you don’t need to draw them like they’re rimmed with heavy eyeliner. In general, don’t draw an enclosed space.

And, make sure your hand is relaxed. I would grip the pencil like I was using it to cling to a cliff-face, and the harder I gripped it, the worse my drawing became. Draw smooth, long lines instead of short, carefully placed ones. And remember, you can always get another sheet of paper!

Very detailed drawings that look like photographs seem to be quite a rage now, but if you’re going to do that, why not just stick with the actual photograph?

In commercial art, fashion figures are about 8 1/2 heads tall, which is a bit taller than a real human. Maybe supermodels actually are proportioned like that, though.

Mom’s sketch of me when I was a teenager.

To draw faces, she first did an oval for the head, and then a line across the middle, where the eyes would be, and another line down the middle, where the nose would be. She shaded the areas for the eyes, and drew a light line for the nose, and then placed the mouth. This technique is completely different to what I’ve seen people doing on social media, where they start drawing off a really detailed face with, say, just the mouth, but no preliminary markings. I would not be able to do that at all. Mom taught me to use very light lines and get the proportions right, and then, gradually, darken in areas and put in some details.