Here are Ashmole and Beetle, who are coming to the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford very soon. Ashmole is a mole archaeologist, Beetle is an Egyptian Scarab beetle who would talk in hieroglyphics if he got a chance. They're going to be romping round the new Ashmolean Activity book.

Drew a couple of pics of wolfpup howling so thought might as well do this with them...

#25CardofChristmas2025 Here they all are - the last 25 years in Christmas cards. Wishing you all good cheer!

#25CardsofChristmas2025 And so we come to 2025. I've always loved the Looking Glass Insects in Alice, particularly the Rocking Horse Fly. I couldn't make one of those, so here is a flying rocking horse. Merry Christmas one and all!

#25CardsofChristmas2025 We have reached last year! In October 2024 I made an alphabestiary of animals I'd sketched in Natural History museums. The raven was seen at Wollaton Hall. Is a Poe Raven a Christmassy thing? We don't know.

#25CardsofChristmas2025 In 2023 I went to a tabletop museum thing and came across a Hoffmann's ReisStarke Cat - little cut-out cat - and thought - I'll steal that. My cat Pepper is extremely enthusiastic about Food, so here's Pepper the Hungry Cat.

#25CardsofChristmas2025 2022's card was all about cheese and chocolate. The chocolates were Quality Streets - one of the most important Xmas things to me as a child - squirrelling away the jewel-like foils and films and then making them into new things. I have been known to hang them on the tree.

#25CardsofChristmas2025 It's 2021 and I'd been drawing Puss in Boots for fun, so this cat and mice card happened with a panto theme. I just wouldn't trust that cat, you mice...

#25CardsofChristmas2025 And we reach 2020, when we were all locked down. Who could escape this grim isolation for more exotic climes? B. Bird could, complete with openable suitcase for all the holiday essentials: sunglasses, towel, mixed seeds, holiday reading by Thomas Hardly...

#25CardsofChristmas2025 Here we are in 2018, and I was a bit worried about the state of our planet: there was increasing carbon dioxide and decreasing nature. Maybe good to think about the Earthlings of 2050, and the planet we'll pass on to them.

A Christmas cartoon from my new book of science cartoons PHYSICS FOR CATS. In good bookshops and online now: www.tomgauld.com/comic-books-v2

An absolute bedrock institution for understanding how the planet works, just civilization-scaled vandalism by the most incurious morons on Earth

#25CardsofChristmas2025 It’s 2017 and I’m keeping things simple by making another zig-zag card. This time it’s from the birds. They’re very disgruntled at having to wear Christmassy scarves and they’ve been promised bird seed and it hasn’t arrived.

#25CardsofChristmas2025 In 2016 I was thinking about joining the humanists, then realised how human-centric it was. What could you join if you were a reptile or a fish? So I joined The RestoftheWorldists. Because the Rest of the World can't talk, but someone needs to give them a voice.

#25CardsofChristmas2025 We're at 2015 today. I had a longing to send a chocolate coin somehow as a card, for, to me, chocolate coins scream Christmas. But I was mindful of 2012's postal disaster with the impounded matchbox cards. I had to keep the card to a strict 5mm thickness.

#25CardsofChristmas2025 2014: The Cabinet of Mystery This card I’d accidentally made when messing around with my book The Bad Bunnies Magic Show. The Bad Bunnies have locked their magician the Great Hypno in a trunk and are attempting his tricks and unleashing unexpected transformations.

#25CardsofChristmas2025 In 2013 I’d been running an after-school club in pop-up at my son’s primary school. This card happened after we’d looked at angle folds, & I found out you could use the power of a tiny fold to make wings beat. Everyone needs one….a pocket Fairy Godmother

#25CardsofChristmas2025 It's 2012 and I'm wondering: could I make a Christmas card that was also a matchbox? And what would you put in a matchbox? What about a spare Pocket Planet, just in case of a planetary emergency.

#25CardsofChristmas2025 It's 2011, & we have the chance to check in with how Christmas is going for the insects.Uncle Fly is wrestling with sellotape,the young ants are playing charades,in the attic the little maggots are looking in their stockings. Just a bit worried about what Mrs Weevil is up to…

#25CardsofChrstmas2025 In ThreeByTheSea, Cat Dog&Mouse are given packets of herbs by a passing foxy stranger. This card includes a packet of herb seeds to grow your own stuffing. The seeds were a bit random - everything I could find in the garden shed. There were mixed reports about what came up.

#25CardsofChristmas2025 Phew! Reached No9 so now officially On Track. It's The Christmas Dinner Chocolate Selection, an unwise mixing of Turkey, Sprouts and the usual suspects with light & dark chocolate, praline, ganache, and so on. A card to make you feel slightly queasy.

#25CardsofChristmas2025 I have an ongoing obsession with model theatres. I was given a teeny toy theatre from Prague by my sister Pippa & that inspired this pocket theatre. It folds flat. Dress your fingers up and act out your favourite panto scene. Oh yes you will. Oh no you won't.

#25CardsofChristmas2025 2007's card is a pretty simple affair - a police line-up of guilty-looking vegetables. The sprouts were stencilled in white emulsion then fed through my printer. They are wanted for crimes against air quality thoughout Christmas time.

#25CardsofChristmas2025 My son Herbie was born in August 2006, so that Christmas I made a bag of mixed Herbs reflecting the many moods of a very Small Person. Looking at the herbs in the bag - looks like a pile of rosemary.

#25CardsofChristmas 2005's card: I screenprinted this one down at the Oxford Printmakers Co-op. And that was about the last batch of printing I ever did at the Co-op - son Herbie was born in August the next year, and going out printmaking stopped being an option.

#25CardsofChristmas I was so excited to find those cardboard bangy bits (that go in crackers & explode when you pull em) were for sale at my local Oxford Art Shop: Cracker cards! The idea: two people pull either end & it goes bang. Hidden in the middle is pointless gift, small paper hat & 'joke.'

#25CardsofChristmas It’s important to remember the Inventors at Christmas. This card from 2003 is also a tiny party hat, featuring Orville & Wilbur Wright, Thomas Edison, Alexander Graham Bell, Frank Whittle & many more. Sadly no female inventors: nowadays I’d definitely have had some there.

#25Cards OK this is actually a card from about 1999. There's no evidence of the 2002 card but it wasn't very good. This is from when I liked collaging people's heads on insect bodies. The box packs flat to be sent in the post. But it arrives empty. Disappointing.But same idea cd become a teeny house

#25CardsofXmas In 2001 I got hold of some lenticular plastic and I wanted to make a little animated shopping fairy. This may be the fiddliest card I've ever made. Film of it coming up...

#25CardsofChristmas No.1: Zooming back in time to the Year 2000... At last! Definite proof of Santa’s existence with these genuine fragments from the Relics at Christmas range. I can’t remember what I made the fragments out of – maybe it was real earwax...revoltingness: quite high