Touted as the subtle sort of fetish erotica that relies on the drama of melancholia instead of on pure eroticism as secret springboards for erotic imaginings, trance painting is deemed by de Veyra to have been culled from the art of Blue Period Picasso, Diego Velázquez as much as Raphael, Chagall, Giorgio de Chirico, Nobuyoshi Araki and the "defamiliarization" technique of the Russian Formalists.