It's hard to say two sentences about inspiration without mentioning dreams. The most interesting thing about dreams is that they are an entire world, separate from our waking one. Though the true nature of dreams is not fully understood, there are many theories running the gamut from the physiological to the spiritual in nature. I believe that dreams are by and large our way of digesting information. We have a voracious appetite when it comes to ideas and just as a burger must be taken apart by our bellies, so must the latest episode of 30 Rock by our head. However this process can be quite messy as many dreams are strange amalgamations of reality and surreal, the cerebral and primal.

The above is a detail from a larger piece I did a long time ago while traveling through Italy. It's a scene from one of the most vivid dreams I've ever had. The dream wasn't necessarily scary as it was tragic but it was so intense that I nearly cried after waking up. It would be nice to paint the entire piece but just doing this one part half-assed took long enough as it is.

My fascination with dreams goes back quite a ways and is partly how I justify my fairly atrocious sleeping habits. I even kept a dream journal at one point (a practice I highly suggest everyone try). This passion for the Sandman's empire greatly influenced my tastes, leading me to adopt surrealists like Dalí and Chagall as favorite artists early on. The work of one Jacek Yerka brings such work to mind. His combination of hyper-realism and surrealism is reminiscent of some Dalí works yet they possess a unique attention to detail that even Dalí forwent. In addition, the artist's meticulous layouts are quite captivating.

If that weren't enough, his tendency towards symmetry is yet another aspect of his work I love. Clearly his work would be right at home on an album cover...maybe a few decades ago. My only issue with his work is that despite the wide variety of scenes, they all share a very similar palette and sense of scale. Most use a combination of pastel yellows, greens and blues with slight variations. Likewise all focus on a singular subject or setting at medium length possibly with some landscape in the background.

Of course it is very difficult to get across any sensible idea using surreality and as such very difficult to create a website one could safely call "surreal." Jim Carrey's website comes to mind for its whimsical nature, a good reflection of the man himself, but Flash is the devil so we must search elsewhere as hard as it is to avoid in cases like this. It's actually quite hard to find "surreal" sites which is a real shame. I've always felt that a websites greatest potential is to become a window to another world so why not a dreamworld? Thankfully a few such sites exist and Dreispitzhalle is one of the few of those to do it well.

The layout of this site simply gorgeous, with its stunning black and white backgrounds cut into strange abstract patterns. This makes the page feel very kinetic, as if it's about start moving at any moment. I also love subtle touches like the smooth menu hover states and the amorphous animated logo and matching browser bar icon (nice touch!).

In contrast to its absence in web, dreams are almost inescapable in film. Indeed one of last year's biggest hits, Inception, was completely based around the concept. While the dreamworld is often used as a parallel setting, often the setting is never explicitly declared to be a dream but we somehow reflexively know it to be i.e. if the walls are melting. Dreams, like so many great inspiring things, are universal to the human experience allowing all to recognize and empathize. Some even claim to have shared dreams and there are even certain dreams common to all people (teeth falling out, naked in school, etc.), not to mention the entire science of dream reading. It's hard to know whats true or not when it comes to the unconscious world (third eyes, not so much). Yet maybe that's fitting since that's how that worlds works anyway. If the following video were true, it would all be a lot more straight forward. Sweet dreams.

The Sketching Mechanism is a series of weekly posts, published on Mondays, containing the artistic musings of Mobile Designer/Developer Ben Chirlin during our Monday morning meeting at the NY Creative Bunker as well as his inspiring artistic finds of the week.