[REQ] making 80's style DIY books images in illustrator

Question

In the 80's and 90's there were lot of books on Do-It-Yourself. These books were based on things like how to repair your home, how to do wall paneling, building outdoor patios etc. They had very good illustrations with extremely fine linework and solid colour patches. Check out the sample image. How were these illustrations made?
I'm trying to convert an actual photograph of a site construction practice and then I do a trace command on it. The result is that there are too many lines in between.
Or if I do a posterize thing in photoshop to get solid patches of colours, then do a trace thing in Illustrator, the result is the same, only with less amount of lines in face.
For example if there's a human face, then illustrator will do lines for every place where ever there's a change of shade and shadow on cheek, so a cheek won't come as a cheek but 3-4 polygons. How can I make such illustration in illustrator effectively?

Answer 1

First, forget auto-tracing. There is no instant-gratification magic bullet here. Auto-tracing is a cheap trick and doesn't generate clean line drawings.
The drink dispenser and its three insert details are drawn by isometric method, ensuring mechanically-correct proportion and scale. (The defacto standard for technical drawings for instructions, parts explosions, cutaways, etc., etc.). The human figures and hands just serve as "decoration" enhancements of the technical information being depicted to put it in an actual-use scene. The man operating the dispenser is manually drawn, perhaps (but not necessarily) using a reference photo shot from an approximately isometric viewpoint. The insert of the woman is just a similar manual line drawing, perhaps (but not necessarily) using an ordinary perspective photo. "Not necessarily" because a skilled illustrator can draw such figures to fit a scene without using photos (much like a comic book illustrator would).
JET