By Gage Luce

Morbid, gross, dark, weird, these are just a few words that could describe the art work of bay area artist Alex Pardee. Pardee has been doing art for well over two decades, however, he never really took it seriously until the age of 15.

"If you really take a look at my images, I don't really have a lot of gore or violence in them. But I think I have enough suggestion," Pardee said. "I draw kind of what I want to see and what I would like to see walking around the world"

Hospitalized for in his teen years, Pardee found that art helped him forget about his problems.

"It hit me a little harder at the time…I didn't have anything to make me feel better and drawing helped me take my mind off of things."

That experience was what let him know what he wanted to do with his life.

Growing up on horror movies, Tails from the Crypt comics, graffiti and gangster rap, all those elements are key factors to his artwork. Alex would make copies of his sketches and place them around the bay area and would put his homemade art books in between the pages of various magazines inside waiting rooms.

"In 2000 I got fed up with everything, and said I know I'm not going to let myself fail if I just stop doing everything and try and do art" he said. "I quit my job, saved some money and just lived the next year and a half off of like five grand and sold some art on ebay."

Pardee is probably best known for doing the album artwork for the band The Used, however, he has also worked for underground hip hop artist Cage, Hurley and Upper Playground. He is a member of the groups Cardboard City and Zero Friends. He also runs his .

Pardee recently designed a new series of shirts for Hurley, under the Night of the Treeple clothing line. The marketing scheme behind the new line is based on a movie that never actually existed. Pardee just made it up.

"The story Night of the Treeple, is basically a story about the government dumping toxic waste in the forest, a man gets the waste on him and he turns into this treeple dude and goes off killing people and turning others into trees" he said.

Pardee is working with Warner Bros television on an animated TV series titled "Chadam." The character Chadam is based off of a character Pardee created for "The Used". The series will be written, designed by and co-directed by Pardee.

"I was 99 percent involved in the production up until the last stages of it," he said. "Now it's just all programing and stuff like that. It's looking really, really, good."

Pardee's websites are www.eyesuckink.com and www.zerofriends.com you can purchase clothing, toys, books, art and various other products Alex has created through Zero Friends.