Reference articles on history, science, culture and more
Encyclopedia

Tom Gauld

Scottish cartoonist and illustrator

Image credit is listed at the end of this article.

Tom Gauld (born 1976) is a Scottish cartoonist and illustrator. He has been awarded the Eisner Award for Best Humor Publication three times, for his books Baking With Kafka (2018), Revenge of the Librarians (2023), and Physics for Cats (2026).

His style reflects his self-professed fondness of "deadpan comedy, flat dialogue, things happening offstage and impressive characters". Others note that his work "combines pathos with the farcical" and exhibits "a casual reduction of visual keys into a more rudimentary drawing style".

01Career

Gauld is best known for his comic books Goliath and Mooncop as well as his collections of one-page cartoons. He has also authored a number of smaller-scale books such as Guardians of the Kingdom, Robots, Monsters etc., Hunter and Painter and his cartoon Move to the City, which ran weekly in London's Time Out in 2001-2002.

Gauld studied illustration at Edinburgh College of Art, where he first started to draw comics "seriously", and the Royal College of Art. At the Royal College of Art, he worked with friend Simone Lia. Together they self-published the comics First and Second under their Cabanon Press, which they started in 2001. (The two volumes were subsequently published together by Bloomsbury Publishing in 2003, as Both.)

As part of commercial projects, Gauld has done some animation work; in an interview, he commented that "Comics are a lot of work but animation ... was too much."

His books are now published by Drawn & Quarterly and he regularly produces cartoons and illustrations for The New Yorker (including cover art), The New York Times, The Guardian and New Scientist.

02Influences

In a 2011 interview, Gauld listed his "Cartooning heroes": William Heath Robinson, Gary Larson, Roz Chast, Richard McGuire, Ben Katchor, Daniel Clowes, Chris Ware and Jochen Gerner.

03Personal life

Gauld grew up in the countryside in North East Scotland, and has said that he had always wanted to be involved with something creative related to drawing. He now lives in London with his wife, artist Jo Taylor, and his children.

While his full-length book Goliath is based on the eponymous biblical figure, Gauld is not religious.

Watch videos about Tom GauldExplainers and documentaries on YouTube (opens in a new tab)

Sources and credits

This article is adapted from the Wikipedia article Tom Gauld, written by its contributors and licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Fathomly has changed the layout, removed citation markers, navigation and maintenance notices, and adjusted punctuation. This adapted version is shared under the same license. For references, see the original article.

Images, from Wikimedia Commons:

Fathomly is not affiliated with or endorsed by the Wikimedia Foundation. Spotted a problem? Tell us.