We've created a montage of three images to make a point. Can you tell the difference between a painting and a photograph?

Japanese artist Yasutomo Oka is able to create paintings so lifelike that you could swear you were looking at a photo.

As you might have guessed it, the answer to the question is: "None of them are." Amazingly, all three of these images were created on a canvas by Mr. Oka's hand.

Mr. Oka created a Twitter account at the beginning of 2018 and began posting images of his incredible photorealistic paintings of beautiful women. Very soon, his likes and retweets registered in the thousands. However, when he participated in a recent hashtag campaign for artists to introduce their work, including four of his best portraits, his tweet truly went viral with over 155,500 likes and 57,000 retweets at the time of writing.

Let's take a closer look at his artistry:

The reaction to his work on Twitter has, unsurprisingly, been unanimously laudatory. Here are some of the comments:

• Even after I've been told they were paintings, I can still only see them as photos.
• Out of all the painting I've seen before, this has shocked me the most.
• I only have one word: I'm moved. The colors harmonize. I'm in love...
• What? These are paintings? No matter which way I look at it, they seem like photos to me...

In case you're wondering about the identity of the women in the paintings, Mr. Oka works with models but he "idealizes" them in his work.

The paintings Mr. Oka has graciously allowed us to post here in this article are only a sample of his work. To see more, please take a look at Yasutomo Oka's twitter account or check out his blog here.

Mr. Oka has not announced any upcoming shows yet but he is published regularly. Most recently, he was featured in the March 2018 issue of the Japanese magazine Art Collectors' and in the art book Jissha Kaiga no Uruwashiki Joseizo (Beautiful Women in Realistic Paintings) 写実絵画の麗しき女性像 which can be purchased on Amazon.co.jp