My name is Louma El-Khoury. I am an inde­pen­dent illus­tra­tor who offers cus­tom illus­tra­tions and art for licens­ing.
Draw­ing is my favorite thing to do, and I have been lucky enough to make it my career.
My spe­cialty is fash­ion illus­tra­tion and fem­i­nine art, how­ever, I have cre­ated designs for var­i­ous types of clients, from the baby and kid indus­try to auto­mo­tive tech­nolo­gies.  Besides draw­ing, I like to design prod­ucts such as fash­ion acces­sories and jour­nals, and my favorite are sta­tionery prod­ucts with fab­ric accents.

> My cities
I was born and raised in Beirut, Lebanon and I try to visit every sum­mer to see my fam­ily and friends. Lebanon is a charm­ing, small, chaotic coun­try that has beau­ti­ful chains of moun­tains, and a long coast by the Mediter­ranean Sea. Peo­ple are fun and friendly, and the Lebanese cui­sine is to die for.

View from Beirut show­ing the Mediter­ranean Sea and the moun­tain snowcaps

View in Mount Lebanon show­ing a typ­i­cal Lebanese vil­lage with red brick rooftops

I moved to Mon­treal in 1999 to study fash­ion design and I lived there for more than 10 happy years. One of the rea­sons why I chose Mon­treal is that Eng­lish and French are equally spo­ken, and I pre­ferred to study in French. The cul­ture diver­sity is the most inter­est­ing thing about Mon­treal; it’s been so enrich­ing for me to have friends from so many dif­fer­ent places, cul­tures and back­grounds. It was espe­cially fas­ci­nat­ing to study fash­ion with them, and see how each student’s back­ground and cul­ture influ­enced their cre­ations.
I also have a lot of Lebanese friends in Mon­treal, and beau­ti­ful mem­o­ries. I love the ‘Québé­cois’ (Cana­di­ans from Que­bec), their hon­esty and sim­plic­ity, and their accent in both Eng­lish and French. I love the yearly events and fes­ti­vals (Jazz Fes­ti­val, For­mula 1, Just for Laughs etc.), the artsy Mon­treal atmos­phere and I am def­i­nitely a fan of the Que­bec music.

Mon­treal down­town, in a freez­ing night of Jan­u­ary (Minus 40ish C)

Now I live in Van­cou­ver (BC) since Jan­u­ary. I do miss Mon­treal a lot, but I am lov­ing Van­cou­ver and get­ting used to my new envi­ron­ment. I love the fact that the city is located by the ocean and sur­rounded with beau­ti­ful moun­tains; it reminds me of Lebanon.

> Work­ing
I worked as a fash­ion designer for about 4 years, at In-Work Mon­treal, a pri­vate label fash­ion com­pany. I also launched the company’s mar­ket­ing depart­ment, became a pro in sweaters and knits, trav­eled all over Europe and spent way too many night hours on the phone with the offices in Hong Kong and Tai­wan, solv­ing design problems…

At Fore­cast Brands Inc., I designed at least 12 lines of bath and beauty prod­ucts, cos­met­ics and acces­sories, as well as occa­sional sta­tionery lines. Almost every­thing had to be mocked up at some point, and now I think I can mock up pretty much any­thing from beauty gift bas­kets to a com­plete sta­tionery col­lec­tion, includ­ing the shrink wrap­ping and all. I was also involved in mar­ket­ing, and learned every­thing about prod­uct development, from the sketch on the paper to the actual prod­uct on the shelf. I like work­ing for small sized com­pa­nies because I get to be involved in many aspects of how they func­tion, not only what I was hired to do.

After that, I was hired by a Mon­treal based com­pany to design Paris Hilton’s first line of scrap­book­ing albums, launched last year in Ana­heim (CA). This project was very chal­leng­ing, very ‘glam’ and a lot of fun! It’s so reward­ing to see a design that is com­pletely and entirely invented by you, become real exactly as you drew it. I also cre­ated fash­ion DIY craft kits for girls.

One of the 12 albums designed for PH — the most clas­sic album (this is entirely drawn on Illus­tra­tor btw :)

Paris Hilton hold­ing that album at the Craft Expo in Ana­heim, CA

I launched Poki­dots! in Feb­ru­ary 2009. I offered graphic design and print­ing ser­vices to local (Mon­treal) com­pa­nies, while prepar­ing my port­fo­lio for art licens­ing. Read more about my art licens­ing jour­ney, and my first Sur­tex expe­ri­ence.
I love what I do and I am very proud of the evo­lu­tion of my career (and Poki­dots!) in the past 2 years. Every day is a great learn­ing expe­ri­ence for me, in so many fields: design, illus­tra­tion, research, busi­ness, mar­ket­ing, soft­ware, sales, even blog­ging and net­work­ing. I am lov­ing every minute of it.

> Besides work
I love sum­mer out­door activ­i­ties: Bik­ing, hik­ing, camp­ing, swim­ming, canoe­ing, horse­back rid­ing, sit­ting at the park :)… Dri­ving (+ unplanned road trips) and cook­ing are also on my list of favorite things to do.

Cof­fee makes life bet­ter, and the things that are impor­tant to me are fam­ily, and just being happy.☮