Few people, if any, have impressed me more during my career than the Dutch twin brothers Alfons and Adrie Kennis, also known as Kennis & Kennis. Specialized in meticulous, extremely accurate and awe-inspiring beautiful paleontological reconstructions and paintings, the talent of the Kennis brothers is as amazing as their personalities.

Adrie Kennis, Wilma, and Alfons Kennis

Alfons and Adrie started publishing in the magazine in the early 2000′s, brought in by former Art Director Chris Sloan (see Chris’ new company here). I remember vividly the lasting impression their series of paintings of extinct mammals of the Jurassic left in me, a couple of years before I started working for National Geographic. I wanted to meet them right away!

Adrie and Alfons work simultaneously in all their paintings in an organic process where it’s impossible to know which one of them worked in the different phases or areas of a canvas. Their feature textured white backgrounds are beautiful and the exquisitely lightning and sculptural feel of their figures reveals their technique: they first build every animal they paint as a three dimensional, small-size, clay model for reference of volume and lightning.

As it turns out the Kennis brothers are terrific sculptors and their anatomical knowledge is sought by natural history museums all over the world.

Most paleo-reconstructions of extinct hominids feel stiff and lifeless to me, but not theirs. The emotion and expression of their figures is unique. As examples, see their “Lucy’s baby” below. The playful 3 year old Australopithecus afarensis was our cover in November, 2006. Below it, the weathered face of a Neanderthal male:

I was fortunate to work directly with the Kennis brothers in the reconstruction of a female Neanderthal we created for our October 2008 cover. The story had it all. Terrific science (the neanderthal genome was being decoded, offering new clues), picturesque fossils sites in Siberia and Spain and the unfolding drama of a species being cornered into extinction in Europe as homo sapiens quickly occupied their former range in Europe.

Alfons and Adrie worked for 6 month on our female Neaderthal, in a meticulous process that started with the reconstruction of an entire skeleton based on the existing fossils of different specimens scattered around the world. I art directed from Washington, and visited in their amazing studio-warehouse near Amsterdam during the process.

Since the best existing reference for the thorax was a male specimen, Adrie and Alfons painstakingly disassembled a model of the thorax, shaved off a few millimeters off each rib and each vertebra and put it back together to obtain an appropriately sized smaller female thorax.

We worked closely with scientists at Duke University, the University of Washington in St. Louis and the Natural History Museum of London for accuracy. Despite the enormous amount of work involved in creating a life-size, articulated and scientifically accurate skeleton, at the end it would not be visible. The purpose was to serve as a base for the external layers of the body, knowing that the proportions given by the bones were right. The next step was to add all the muscles and skin, in layers of plasticine clay:

And this is the external appearance of the clay model before casting it into the final silicone figure:

The finished model incorporated real red hair of Scottish Highland cattle (DNA evidence pointed to many neanderthals being red-haired) and a carefully crafted outer layer of skin that included wrinkles and pores the Kennis brothers obtained by transferring skin impressions of their own faces into the model. Alfons and Adrie finally added black pock marks, a tan face tonality and reddened cheeks after studying the faces of Mongolian nomads and other populations that spend a lot of time outdoors in climates as cold as Europe was when it was inhabited by Neanderthals.

Being National Geographic, we couldn’t just photograph Wilma (our reconstruction’s nickname) in a studio. The Kennis brothers took her all the way to Spain in the back of their truck, and I joined them there along with photographer Joe McNally and our Creative Director to do a photo shoot next to the cave where some of the evidence was found.

The adventures of the photo shoot were best narrated by then Design Editor Oliver Uberti in his former blog. Among other things, we were evicted from a National Park by guards for conspicuously carrying a large naked female figure without permission to do so, and chased by a wild bull on the way to the cave!

And all of that just to show a cover and two other pictures in the magazine, plus the accompanying graphic I did with artist Bruce Morser. You must think we are crazy, and we do feel that way sometimes!

In case you are curious, here are three of the many sketches the Kennis brothers did at the beginning of the process. The first takes were too feminized and idyllic to my taste. We wanted a neanderthal female that was defiant and strong, as some of the new scientific evidence pointed to the fact neanderthal may have participated in hunting along with males, unlike homo sapiens.

I’ll finish with another painting by Alfons and Adrie for a more recent stories on extinct Australian megafauna. As in any art direction project involving this odd pair of geniuses, there were some heated arguments about the direction of the project, with me and former Graphics Editor Hiram Henriquez working on it from Nat Geo’s side. It’s not unusual for them to refuse ANY changes to their artwork but I see that as an expression of how deeply they care about the integrity of their artwork and the scientific accuracy behind, and we always ended up agreeing. Can’t wait to do it again!

Check the Kennis brothers’ website here, I hope you’ll love their work. Also, here is a video where they narrate their process for a reconstruction of Otzi the Iceman. This one was not commissioned by National Geographic, be we used a picture of the model in our November 2011 issue.

Watching Fernando Baptista, one of our Senior Graphics Editors, at work is a fascinating experience. The October issue of National Geographic features just another impressive reconstruction graphic born out of his endessly creative and perfectionist mind. The story is about a series of caves in the Nepalese district and former kingdom of Mustang. Although spectacular complexes of cliffside caves were already known in the area, a new key find was the so-called Tomb 5 in Samdzong. A powerful leader was buried there 1,300 to 1,800 years ago in a wooden coffin, surrounded by sacrificed animals, ceremonial objects and, mysteriously, a child.

Here is Fernando’s finished graphic, a photographed model painstakingly built with papier maché, clay, plasticine, wood, and many weeks of research. The map at the bottom is by Senior Graphic Editor Martin Gamache.

And this is the video Fernando and Video Director editor Hans Weise created for our iPad edition (for subscribers only):

Mustang Caves Video

►

THE FIRST IDEA The original idea was to focus on the cave city complex of Tsarang. Fernando created several pencil and watercolor sketches, but it turned out information on the interior of the caves was insufficient to attempt a detailed reconstruction. I love the look of unfinished and rough sketches. Today these are all drawn in paper or on the computer, but we have quite a few old sketches in the office painted with oil over canvas! and mailed by artists. I’ll photograph a few one of these days to show you.

FOCUSING ON TOMB 5 Our main consultant, Dr. Mark Aldenferder, was part of the team of archeologists and mountaineers working in the area. He pointed Fernando to the sensational find of the funerary cave complex of Samdzong. The first pencil sketches were made (above).

Fernando has a Fine Arts background and worked for Spanish daily newspaper El Correo for 14 years before coming over to Nat Geo. He is an exceptional illustrator. Fernando often creates small clay models just as reference for his illustrations. This allows him to investigate the volume and lightning and to find the best point of view possible. What others may do with 3D software, Fernando does with plasticine, clay and carving tools from the art store or from his kitchen. The model above was created for this purpose but when our Creative Director Bill Marr saw it, the concept was born. Why not create a larger, very accurate model of the cave and photograph it?. We thought this would not only have a striking presence in the printed page, but it would allow us to play with a moving camera and create a video for our iPad edition that would immerse the readers into the tight, claustrophobic cave space as they looked at the different offerings and remains.

Fernando and Senior Design Editor John Baxter worked on several layout possibilities. Two early examples are shown below. We thought we would have bigger impact on a vertical spread (the reader must turn the magazine to read it). At this point we are mostly dealing with hierarchy, flow of information and determining which elements will be essential in the storytelling and which can be eliminated or more effectively shown elsewhere in the layout. Usually we start with quick pencil sketches.

We were still planning to show the city cave complex in Tsarang (the larger block), but we realized this could confuse readers because the tomb shown in the main art is actually not part of that complex.

Fernando enlisted our talented art research intern, Fanna Gebreyesus, to dive into the details of the cave, and ultimately also to help build it. The large model wall structure was created in papier maché, using glue to hold dozens of layers of newspapers together. Here you can see it at an early stage.

To create the rock and earth texture, Fernando and Fanna gathered six different types of sand and earth of different colors and grain texture (from the park, from the street, from a weekend visit to Alexandria, VA…). Fernando’s wife Begoña helped eliminate the biggest particles with a cheesecloth and then they were sprinkled them around the cave on top a layer of adhesive spray.

To create the different mummified animal skulls found in the cave (probably ritual offerings) Fernando calculated the exact size needed, printed out photographs of the same species in three views (front, side and top) at the same size and carefully sculpted them in clay. To complicate things, we had to calculate how much the skulls would shrink after baking them (in Fernando’s oven at home!), which turned out to be about 20 percent.

The idea was to represent the cave as it would look around 20 years after the burial, with mummified skin still attached to the skulls. To create that effect, Fernando applied a thin layer of paper, glue and leather from an old jacket, and then he painted them. The metallic objects were made in clay, painted with metallic shine paint and then “aged” with acrylic colors. Fernando molded iron wire to create the low tripod that sustained one of the vessels.

A stunning gold mask covered the face of the man’s remains. After careful observation, it was apparent that there were traces of paint in the nose but also a series of thin lines around the face. Fernando pointed this out to Dr. Aldenderfer, suggesting a way of reconstructing the original design of those lines. After several rounds, the expert archeologist was really excited. It’s not unusual for us to collaborate with an expert as they investigate, helping visualize and solidify their theories.

Fernando used copper to sculpt the mask. To create the hood covering the mummy head (see the first picture in the post) Fanna brought a piece of ethiopian cloth, which Fernando aged with watercolors and coffee. Then Fanna sewed the mask to the cloth using metallic thread through extremely thin holes following Dr. Aldenderfer’s instructions.

The skeleton of the adult male was a plastic toy that had just the right size. Fernando applied the same aging technique he used with the skulls. However, we had to add the smaller skeleton of a child, also present in the cave. It was found laying close to the wooden coffin, on the floor. Fernando and Fanna looked for the right size plastic skeleton all over the Internet and in city stores for over a week, with no result. Utimately, Fernando decided to buy another plastic skeleton like the one he used for the adult, and then proceeded to cut almost every bone of the body,  (that’s right, manually and one by one!!!) shorten it, reshape it and reattach it. Insanity! That is how far Fernando will go to achieve accuracy in his reconstructions.

The row of beads that once adorned the mask of the chief turned Fernando’s office into a workshop for tiny jewelry work (below). I think he missed his work with large canvasses more than ever…

We kept looking at different layout options, but none of them was really convincig us. The one shown above had a somewhat clunky stacking of two horizontal layers of context information. It was too much work before the reader could reach the main image, and the lack of hierarchy given by so elements of similar size was apparent. On top of that, the very realisitc model could have been read as an actual photograph of the cave. At the end, we decided that it was important to show the edges of the model itself to present it as a hand-made recreation. The structure of the graphic (below) was now much simpler.

The wooden box that served a coffin (the original is shown below) was recreated by Fernando in wood working closely with the expert, as Fernando wanted to use the same assemblage technique to hold the four walls together with wooden rivets. We also recreated the decoration.

Our work with consultants continues to the very end of a project, and they are continuously sent new versions for revision. . Below is one of many files sent by Fanna and Fernando to Dr. Aldenferder to get his approval on the different details of the cave.

Staff photographer Mark Thiessen (below) made final photographs of our model with multiple angles and light settings in our photo studio. Here you can see the actual size of the model. The small plates contain the different types of sand and earth Fernando used to texturize the cave walls.

Most people are surprised to learn National Geographic magazine only has two photographers in staff, to do studio photography. Nearly all stories are shot by freelancers. But Mark is an award winning photographer that has done several feature stories for the magazine.

With a finished model, it was time to work on the video the video. Fernando had the idea of having the flickering light of a candle illuminating the scene to get a mysterious ambience and some motion in the light and shadows to bring the inanimate object to life. Here you can see him making a test, filming a short scene with his iPhone and a candle light. Ultimately, we decided that a hand holding a candle would be visible in the video. Without its presence, the scene would have looked all too real and perhaps confuse readers.