With 52,000 followers on Instagram and a book of her drawings, Love Sick, published last summer, Cave is at the vanguard of a new wave of young female illustrators carving out space for themselves online.

At first glance, these women aren’t connected by much. They work in different styles, live in distant cities; many of them have never even spoken to one another.

But what they have in common is a desire to use their illustrations to show women’s thoughts, feelings, experiences and friendships as they really are – and to use social media to share their work.

“I'm aware of this ‘movement’ because it's my favourite part of the internet – dropping the pretence of an idealised life to show who you really are,” New York-based illustrator Siobhan Gallagher, who posts her work on Instagram under the handle @siogallagher, tells Stylist.co.uk. “We’re imperfect, scared, anxious and depressed – but we’re willing to share and relate to others.”

Scared and willing to share: meet the female illustrators taking on Instagram's cult of perfection