Beccy Blake

Beccy Blake has worked on a variety of children’s books as an author, illustrator and storyboard artist. Her work spans picture books, educational reading schemes and comics. Her practice also includes character design and illustration for animation.

Blake’s illustration credits include titles in major UK reading programmes such as Read Write Inc. Phonics, Collins Big Cat and Reading Champion. Her work appears across decodable readers and early fiction, with a focus on clear visual storytelling for developing readers. Publishers listing her work include Hachette Children’s Group, among others. In graphic fiction, Bloomsbury Children’s acquired her middle-grade series Chicken Hill and is represented by Bath Literary Agency.

Books she has authored and illustrated are The Chicken Hill Series, humorous, action-packed graphic novels about a strange town full of bizarre adventures, aimed at older children. Early readers and educational books she worked on are Collins Big Cat series, My Exercise Diary and What Am I?, simple, early reading books designed for young children learning to read. Books she illustrated include the Reading Champion series and Dragon’s Lost Roar.

Beccy has a love of all things humorous which invariably end up in her pictures and paintings. She enjoys exploring ideas and narrative from simply drawing imaginative and amusing concepts through to beautifully coloured artwork and bespoke pieces. She loves observing life and all the silly side it brings, her illustrations make her young audience smile whether they’re reading a book she has illustrated or an animation she has storyboarded for. Since leaving art college in Newcastle upon Tyne she has worked extensively in the world of children’s publishing, animation, design and advertising, editorial, greetings cards and bespoke mural and art commissions, both here in the UK and overseas. She works mainly in pencil, acrylics, watercolour, pen and ink and digital media often combining all.

As well as regular illustration commissions she has been working with Complete Control, a double Bafta winning children’s digital multimedia Studio, based in Bath, on the first, second and third series of Nick Cope’s Popcast for CBeebies. Beccy Blake’s involvement in the animation department is 
a testament to the collaborative effort that goes into creating the beloved children’s show.