Tessera

I've added five new original drawings to the Art for Sale section of my website. www.tomgauld.com/art-for-sale

Some hot book sketchbook doodles...

My latest books cartoon for @theguardian.com #heatwave

Panel 1
A cartoon book with a face, legs and arms shouts out "Beware! Heatwave reading dangers!"

Panel 2
Caption "Binding glue softened by the sun"
Image: The book stands helplessly as its glue drips and pages fall to the floor.

Panel 3
Caption "Dropped while reading in a cooling bath"
Image: The book splashes into the water

Panel 4
Caption "Mislaid by a heat-addled reader"
Image: The book gestures wildly as the reader stumbles away in a daze.

Panel 5
Caption "Spontaneous combustion"
Image: The book explodes in flame.

Panel 6
"Sweaty hands!" screams the book as it runs away from a large pink hand, dripping with perspiration.

My latest books cartoon for @theguardian.com Many more here: www.theguardian.com/profile/tom-gauld

Title (in a yellow star): "Offers at our Bookshop"

Panel 1: Buy two, get one free
A figure approaches the till with three books

Panel 2: Buy four, get a free tote bag
The cashier holds up a tote.

Panel 3: Buy one, get talking to staff, leave with five
Customer leaved happily, carrying a full tote and waving to tthe wo staff

Panel 4: Buy none, get a guilty feeling
Customer skulks out of the shop

Panel 5: Buy three as gifts, get the urge to keep them
Customer walking home already reading the books

Panel 6. Get overexcited, buy twelve...Get home, get eye-roll from partner
Customer arrives home reading a book and carrying two full totes.

My latest @newscientist.com cartoon

Title: My confidence in my understanding of the scientific theory.

A diagram where the confidence is marked in red on an otherwise white figure

Panel 1
"Before I got a book about it."
The figure is red up to about his stomach

Panel 2
"While I was reading the book."
The figure is reading a book. He is red up to his forehead.

Panel 3
"When I had finished the book."
The red level has dropped to around his mouth

Panel 4
"One week later."
Now it is at his chest.

Panel 5
"When I try to explain it to somebody."
The level is back at stomach level.

Panel 6
"When they ask a follow-up question."
The red is so low we can barely see it.

Tom Gauld@tomgauld.bsky.social · 4w ago

Come and get your books signed! Today 1-2pm

I will be signing at The ARC festival this Sunday from 1-2pm at the @goshcomics.bsky.social table. @arcfestivallondon.bsky.social is an exciting, new, free comics festival in London on the 11th and 12th of July. Come along! www.arc-london.uk

We see a stick figure running through a ravaged desert pursued by a mechanical claw. The text begins "2050ad: Society has collapsed and the book festivals have gone rogue. Their terrifying motorized venues patrol the wastelands, hunting for audience members" We can now see that the claw is on the front of an enormous, mad-max-style battle-rig, adorned with spikes, skulls and armour. The text continues "Programmer-Warlords brutally preside over a relentless series of interviews, discussions and poetry readings.” In the trailer of the truck, a poetry reading is taking place, in a tower above it, the huge, muscular, horned programmer raises his fists and yells orders to his minions. The monstrous vehicle thunders on leaving one lone stick figure behind The text concludes "Occasionally, dazed survivors are found wandering with a signed hardback book in a cotton tote bag."

Tom Gauld @tomgauld.bsky.social · 4w ago

I will be signing at The ARC festival this Sunday from 1-2pm at the @goshcomics.bsky.social sky.social table. @arcfestivallondon.bsky.social al is an exciting, new, free comics festival in London on the 11th and 12th of July. Come along! www.arc-london.uk

Title: At the book festival

Image: A woman gives directions to a man outside a large tent:
"No, this isn't the literary fiction tent, It's the self-help marquee. You need to go back to the cookbook pagoda, turn to face the popular science teepee and it'll be on your left, between the celebrity memoir gazebo and the military history wigwam."

Tom Gauld @tomgauld.bsky.social · 4w ago

A heatwave cartoon for @newscientist.com

1. Title: The North Wind and the Sun quarrelled as to who was the stronger.

2. The Sun says: "I propose a wager: See yonder traveller, let us see who can make him remove his cloak."

3. The northwind blows on the traveller, the sun says: "You blow yet he only wraps it tighter!"

4. The sun shines on the traveller, saying: Observe! . The traveller mutters "nice and warm"

5. The Sun says "See, my kindness brought results!" The traveller has removed hos cloak and begins to sweat. "Fair enough, you win." concedes the North Wind.

6. "Tremble before my gracious heat!" says the sun, smiling bradly. His heat has started a fire. the traveller flees. The North Wind says "I think that’s enough."

7. "Let the world burn with my cleansing benevolence!!" blazes the sun madly, now grown huge in the sky. The land is a burning fireball. "Now you’re scaring me!" says the North Wind anxiously.

Tom Gauld @tomgauld.bsky.social · 4w ago

My latest books cartoon for @theguardian.com #heatwave

This, as requested by @mhplives.bsky.social, is the @newscientist.com cartoon that Alan Moore describes (rather well) in a recent episode of the Team Human podcast www.teamhuman.fm/episodes/371...

My latest books cartoon for @theguardian.com

Title: Presenting My cover designs for a series of Highbrow Literary Novels

Panel one.
Designer shows a book cover to the publisher. It shows a woman and man looking at a burning house with an orange sky behind.
The publisher says
"Not classy enough!"

Panel Two.
Designer shows a book cover to the publisher. It is now the same image in back and white with a text box hiding the house.
The publisher says
"Better, but not right!"

Panel Three.
Designer shows a book cover to the publisher. It is now just white text on a plain navy blue background
The publisher says
"Yes! But take it further!"

Panel Four.
Designer shows a book cover to the publisher. The author name is now gone too, the title is tiny on plain green.
The publisher says
"So close!"

Panel Five.
Designer shows a book cover to the publisher. It is completely blank, white paper.
The publisher says
"Perfection!"

My latest cartoon for @newscientist.com

Title: "In shops now: Classic literature with added mathematics!"

Image: Four book covers.

The Prime Number of Miss Jean Brodie, by Muriel Spark.
Empire of the Sum, by JG Ballard.
Wuthering Heights × lengths × widths, by Emily Bronte.
The Remains Of the Data by Kazuo Ishiguro.

All my New Yorker covers, part 3 of 3 They are all available on the Condé Nast Store where you can buy prints, cards, and other merch. I get a royalty from this. condenaststore.com/art/tom+gauld

The New Yorker
‘food for thought’
cover by Tom Gauld
Description 'City dwellers thinking and talking about their food cravings.'

The New Yorker
‘Captive Audience’
cover by Tom Gauld
Description 'Apartment building residents in windows watch a dog playing fetch with its owner outside during lockdown'

The New Yorker
‘winter sun’
cover by Tom Gauld
Description 'A woman and dog gaze at a painting of the sun on rainy winter day.'

The New Yorker
‘Landscape Portrait’
cover by Tom Gauld
Description 'A tourist takes a selfie in front of a museum's large painting.'

All my New Yorker covers (2/3) They are all available on the Condé Nast Store where you can buy prints, cards, and other merch. I get a royalty from this. www.condenaststore.com/art/tom+gauld

The New Yorker
‘On the beach’
cover by Tom Gauld
Description 'Panels of people arriving, sunbathing, swimming and finally leaving the beach'

The New Yorker
‘Winter Garden’
cover by Tom Gauld
Description 'Woman watering plants in an indoor garden on a rainy winter day'

The New Yorker
‘Dog walking 2.0’
cover by Tom Gauld
Description 'Robot walking a dog in the park comes upon a woman walking a robot dog'

The New Yorker
‘Rooftop Astronomy’
cover by Tom Gauld
Description 'Panels depicting an adult and a child looking at the stars from a rooftop telescope'

All my New Yorker covers (1/3) They are all available on the Condé Nast Store where you can buy prints, cards, and other merch. I get a royalty from this. www.condenaststore.com/art/tom+gauld

The New Yorker
‘Fall Library’
cover by Tom Gauld
Description 'A woman reclines in a room full of books'

The New Yorker
‘Soundtrack to Spring’
cover by Tom Gauld
Description 'Musical notation in speech bubbles coming from every person and bird in the windows and on the street in front of a New York townhouse.'

ARC London@arcfestivallondon.bsky.social · 3mo ago

ARC is an exciting, new, free comics festival in London on the 11th and 12th of July. I’ll be there on Sunday, signing at the @goshcomics.bsky.social table. Come along! www.arc-london.uk

ARC A festival of contemporary comics. Sat 11th 11am-6pm, Sun 11am-5pm July 2026. Free Entry. Unit 08, Copeland Park, Peckham, London, SE15 3SN. ARC-LONDON.UK

The exhibit that inspired my cover is on at the @britishmuseum.bsky.social in London until September www.britishmuseum.org/exhibitions/early-netherlandish-drawings

Early Netherlandish drawings

Delve into a transformative period of artistic innovation when drawings evolved from preparatory studies to works of art in their own right.

britishmuseum.org

Some process images for my cover for this week's New Yorker (2 of 2) 1 - final Ink drawing. 2 - Close-up of the finished image. 3. - A drawing from the show that inspired my image. 4 - New Yorker web page on the cover.

A photograph of the ink on paper drawing for a New Yorker cover.
The cover is almost completely filled with a large classic painting in a gold frame. It shows a landscape with hills, rocks and trees. A horse and rider stand on a rocky outcrop overlooking a plain that stretches out to the sea. In the bottom left corner of the cover, a smiling tourist takes a selfie with the painting behind him.

The British Museum Website
Object Type:
Drawing
Museum number:
00,9.9
Description:
Mountain landscape with a river; four travellers near a tall, slender tree at left, others including two mounted, on a path moving towards cottages to right, a castle on a craggy, partially wooded mountain beyond. 1553
Pen and brown ink
Watermark:
lozenge with five stars (centre), 41 × 45 mm. Very close to Briquet 6098 (from Prague, 1543).
Producer name:
Pieter Bruegel the Elder
School/style:
Netherlandish
Production date:
1553

The NEW YORKER

Cover Story

Tom Gauld's "Landscape Portrait"

By Françoise Mouly, Art by Tom Gauld

For the cover of the June 29, 2026, issue, the British cartoonist Tom Gauld took inspiration from a visit to an exhibition of early-Netherlandish drawings at the British Museum. "I was blown away by the landscapes-small and intricate, but with such depth, drawing your eye from blades of grass in the foreground to a ship on the horizon," Gauld said. "And, as soon as I stepped out of the quiet darkness of the exhibit, I was surrounded by flocks of happy tourists snapping away with their phones."

Find Tom Gauld's covers, cartoons, and more at the Condé Nast Store.

Some process images for my cover for this week's New Yorker (1 of 2) 1 - Drawing in a passport sized notebook. 2 - Various other doodles. 3 - Rough ink sketch. 4 - Neater Pencil Sketch.

Some process images for my cover for this week's New Yorker (1 of 2) 1 - Drawing in a passport sized notebook. 2 - Various other doodles. 3 - Rough ink sketch. 4 - Neater Pencil Sketch.

A small notebook with an imaginary landscape drawn in black ink.

Scratchy black ink doodles of thoughts and elements leading to the cover.

An early ink version of the cover. The cover is almost completely filled with a large classic painting in a gold frame. It shows a landscape with hills, rocks and trees. A horse and rider stand on a rocky outcrop overlooking a plain that stretches out to the sea. In the bottom left corner of the cover, a smiling tourist takes a selfie with the painting behind him.