Laura El is a digital illustrator known for narrative-driven line work that blends storytelling with delicate, nostalgic imagery. Born in Vilnius, Lithuania, and raised in part in Ireland, she lives and works in New York City, which she draws on as a constant source of inspiration. Her earliest drawings were made with a single, continuous line, a technique that still underlies her more layered, full-color work today.,
El became a full-time artist in 2019 after leaving her job to pursue art as a career. Soon after, she launched her own commission business. She works digitally on an iPad using Procreate and Photoshop, building each piece from base linework through color and detail, a process she says can take 25,000 to 35,000 individual brush strokes. She has cited Pablo Picasso's single-line animal drawings, as well as Edward Hopper and Ernst Haas, as influences on her work. In early 2022 she began exploring NFTs, drawn less by the profile-picture trend than by the appreciation for art she found among collectors. That February she launched her first 1/1 series after concept sketches she posted online drew attention from collectors.
Her illustrated book The Lurkers, a rhyming story about ghostly creatures who prey on children's bad thoughts, debuted as the number-one Amazon bestseller in its category and was named a “Book to Read” by Fox News in 2022.,Her work has since sold at Sotheby's and Christie's and been exhibited on Times Square billboards in New York and in Hong Kong.In 2022 she collaborated with Degen Poet on a portrait combining printed digital illustration with typewriter work, released as a physical original alongside a digital edition of 33.She entered the Solana NFT scene after friends introduced her to the blockchain. She has said “I had never met a more welcoming group of people” in the Solana scene, and has described it as “younger than the ETH art scene, but it's growing and here to stay”.
Her ongoing narrative series The Valemour Estate archives her own memories and dreams through a fictional estate told in three acts, a project she has described as part diary and part mythmaking. In 2026 she held a solo show at the Philippe Labaune Gallery in New York.
