Robyn Belton was born in 1947 in New Zealand. She is best known for her illustrations of children's books. Belton attended Ilam at the Canterbury School of Fine Arts. She studied painting with Russell Clark. Belton formally began her career in 1977 as a freelance illustrator for the Education Department. As her reputation grew, she was asked to go to Wellington as part of a group of writers and illustrators to put together and revise the school reading programme.
After many successful years illustrating the school journal, Belton¿s first hardcover storybook was The Duck in the Gun (1985). The Duck in the Gun was written by Joy Cowley, and won the Russell Clark Award in 1985. In 1990 Belton published David¿s Dad, written by Jennifer Beck. David¿s Dad won the Choysa Illustrators Bursary 1990 and was selected for the Bologna Book Fair Exhibition in 1993. In 1997 Belton and Jennifer Beck published The Bantam and the Soldier. In that same year, the book won both the Picture Book Category of the New Zealand Post Children¿s Book Awards, and the Book of the Year. In 2015 her title, Herbert: The Brave Sea Dog, made The New Zealand Best Seller List.
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