Tom Gauld was born in Aberdeen, Scotland in 1976. As a child his favourite things were drawing, lego, and playing soldiers. He studied illustration at Edinburgh College of Art.

In 2001, Tom started small-press publishing venture Cabanon Press with Simone Lia while they were studying at the Royal College of Art. They published a number of books including First, Second, Three Very Small Comics, and Fluffy. Tom works as an illustrator and cartoonist and has contributed work to The Guardian, The New Yorker, The Believer, The New York Times, and Granta. He illustrated the children’s book The Iron Man by Ted Hughes and made a comic-strip cover for Penguin Books’ deluxe edition of The Three Musketeers. He has created a number of short comic books including Guardians of the Kingdom, Hunter and Painter, and The Gigantic Robot. His comics have appeared in the three most recent editions of the comics anthology Kramers Ergot. In 2008 he was artist-in-residence at the Fumetto Festival in Lucerne, Switzerland.

Since 2005 Tom has made a weekly cartoon about the arts which appears in the Guardian’s Saturday Review section. He lives in London, England, with his partner and two daughters.