“The previous crown on my work (the silver brush 2024) was already a huge surprise, but of course this is completely,” says Natascha Stenvert. The Illustrator from Zeijen won the prestigious Golden Brush yesterday, a prize for the most beautiful illustrated children’s book. She won the prize with her drawings in the book An incredibly large, incredibly dangerous iguana.
For the illustrations in the book, Stenvert has tried a new technique and, especially in view of the gold result, it has more than successful. “She shows her mastery in the delicate emotions she transfers to the reader. But also in the alternation of deliberate simplicity of the ‘children’s drawings’ and detailed illustrations that tell the story,” the jury judges.
This new technique is the tetra suit etching. “With ‘normal’ etching you scratch your drawing in a copper plate and rub it with ink, after which you can make a print,” Stenvertt explains. “You can also do this with the inside of old milk suits if they have an aluminum inside. You can usually only make two or three prints per suit, but it works.”
In addition to etching in metal or milk suits, Stenvert is at home in all kinds of techniques to make its illustrations. Sometimes that is just drawing, painting or making illustrations on the computer. But it may also be that she is tinkering and cuts out her illustrations and puts them together as three -dimensional works of art.
“I am adapting to the story, how I illustrate. And I always like to try a new technique anyway. I will soon follow a Risk Print workshop, where you will make illustrations with the help of old stencil machines. That gives very lively colors and the paint is based on the basis of soy, so it is also environmentally friendly.”
Stenvert has been an illustrator for thirty years, but she has been drawing as long as she can remember. “I was really a book child, I was always reading or drawing. I was not so good in playing outside,” she says laughing.
Yet it is not the profession of draftsman that she originally had in mind. “As a small child I wanted to become a pirate and then a doll maker at the Jim Henson Studios (The Muppet Show).” But after a training at the Minerva Art Academy in Groningen, the choice of illustrator was quickly made.
And after thirty years it still likes that choice. “I do what I love the most. Drawing is actually a bit of puzzling. As an illustrator you get a text supplied and you have to add something to that, an extra layer with it.”
In addition to making drawings, Stenvert is also every now and then on author’s visit to schools. “My own children are now mature, so then I can get in touch with my audience a bit. And that’s how I get out of my work loft.”
Golden Brush or not, the work for Natascha Stenvertt will continue as usual, for example next year she will release her own picture book. Yet the illustrator is now with her head in the clouds of joy. “I fall from one surprise to the other, this is really one Once in a lifetime experience. “