The illustrator whose work perfectly sums up how exhausting modern love is

'Everything is just from my own experience or from observation'

If you’ve ever been so bored on a date that you have genuinely considered punching yourself in the face until you bleed as a means of escape, Julie Houts is an illustrator who will speak to you.

By day, Houts is a womenswear designer at the US retailer J.Crew. But on the side, she is a freelance illustrator who creates wry and deliciously spot-on sketches about modern life.

Her expressive artwork tackles subjects from social etiquette, body hair and climbing the career ladder to fashion.

But her depictions of how tough and exhausting it is to navigate the dating scene are her most cutting. Think Sex in the City meets Girls - but with cartoon violence.

“Everything I am speaking to is just from my own experience or from observation,” she told the WFU Style website.

Houts, who grew up in Indiana and Missouri, studied at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Parsons the New School for Design in New York to study Fashion Design. She now lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Her Instagram feed packed with her work has more than 80,000 followers, and her art has garnered praise from blogger the Man Repeller, and has been used by Vogue and StyleBop.com.

Click here to visit Julie Houts' website.