You might have to stare at it a while to see why, but the signature ought to be a big give-away.

Artist Yoshinobu Saito posted a picture of a delicious looking steak on 6 February which has been gaining momentum on Twitter with over 41,000 likes. Now, as you can probably guess from the fact that he’s an artist, the reason why is that it’s actually an illustration.

It took me a while to be sure that this wasn’t some kind of hoax and that he was passing off a photo as an illustration. But when you stare closely at it for a while you can start to see elements of Saito’s handiwork.

For comparison, someone replied with an actual photograph of a steak they ate.

Saito is a freelance illustrator who did some character designs for Konami games. He works by combining 2-D and 3-D images with various software including Painter and Photoshop on a Mac, creating sci-fi, fantasy, and Kinnikuman themed illustrations.

▼ A quick look at how he does it

This steak was part of a collection celebrating 29 January, which is casually known as Ii Niku No Hi (Good Meat Day, also often held on 29 November), and celebrates delicious meat dishes. He also crafted a very realistic-looking strawberry for Ichigo No Hi (Strawberry Day) on 5 January.

The reason I called this the most inspirational steak you’ll ever see is that Saito wasn’t born with this incredible talent. Rather, it was the result of two decades of training and practice developing his art.

Here he shows his skills in 1996, when he first started, and again in 2012.

It’s the same work ethic he appears to put into his own bodybuilding routine, and as we can see, that is also yielding impressive results.

So, remember – whatever you want to accomplish in life almost never comes to you overnight. You have to put in the work, but take heart because if you stick with it and don’t give up, you’ll get there eventually.

Meanwhile, if you’d like to see more of Yoshinobu Saito’s work, check out his website and Pixiv pages linked below or follow his Twitter account, but be warned: it’s honestly difficult to tell which of his tweets are illustrations or actual photographs.

Sources: Twitter/@yonyon76, Snowin, Pixiv/Yoshinobu Saito
Featured image: Twitter/@yonyon76