Portfolio Review: Alex Pardee

Alex Pardee grew up in the Bay Area, and first dabbled in art when he

made the positive correlation between creating art and eliminating his depression. Since then, he has become a self-made man in the art world with his collective

Zerofriends, a site that sells Pardee's own projects alongside other great work.

Pardee has created comercial work that ranges from movie imagery for movies like Sucker Punch and Inglourious Basterds, to clothing for Upper Playground, to a recent piece for Charlie Sheen's UStream show, Sheen's Korner. Click on to see Pardee's work and to hear his stories about each piece.

TIGER BLOOD, 2011
Ink & Digital

Alex Pardee says: "A week ago, if I drew a picture of Charlie

Sheen with a bloody tiger-hat, it would have been looked at as complete nonsense.

But by Sheen saying a few silly lines in an interview, he turned something that

meant absolutely nothing into something that was ICONIC!

ON CREATING A CUSTOM PIECE FOR SHEEN'S KORNER
"Even though I was on the sidelines

watching for a train wreck with everyone else, I felt a creative urge to jump on that train with him for a moment. I created the 'Tiger Blood' piece for no

other reason than that it was fun. But because of the infinite power of the Internet, Charlie saw this piece and
he loved it! He had me actually create a brand new exclusive piece for
his Ustream show, 'Sheen’s Korner' and he debuted it on his
broadcast this last Tuesday. Yes, it’s been a surreal week."

The Breathing Architecture, 2010
Acrylic on Wood
Part of “VERTIGO” Collection

Alex Pardee says: "This is my favorite of my

recent 'Vertigo' series, a group of work focused on the physical representations of

nightmares. For years,

my technique would go like this: I would get a loose idea, if any idea at all, and scribble until it morphed

into something completely different.

"The 'VERTIGO' paintings

were a completely different challenge because I did everything with the exactly

opposite approach. I treated each painting like an art-directed commercial job

that I gave myself because I wanted all of the paintings to be something new. I wrote descriptions of what I wanted to paint

and forced myself that even if I got stuck on the concept,

I would still just FIGURE out how to make it work. I think that discipline

helped me learn quite a bit with this new collection. The discipline and satisfaction that I had learned from doing work for

Sucker Punch & Inglourious Basterds inspired me to apply that discipline to

my own personal art and the final result was fulfilling."

Sucker Punch: Bullet Rain,
2010
Ink and Digital
Used for Marketing at Comic
Con 2010

Alex Pardee says: “Zack Snyder and his creative

marketing team trusted me with this project in a way I had never experienced on smaller jobs. This is a piece of art that is supposed to represent

this huge multi-million dollar movie, and they let me capture the fun SPIRIT of

the film rather than an actual 'accurate' representation of the film.

I

spent about 2 days on the bullets alone because my goal was to make Zack say, 'Man there are way TOO many ridiculous bullets!' Instead he said, 'That looks about RIGHT!'"

Sucker Punch: The First
Image, 2009
Ink, Watercolor &
Digital

Alex Pardee says: “I met film director Zack
Snyder in 2009 when I created a 'Watchmen' painting & print for the

2009 New York Comic Con.

Months later, though an 'Inglourious Basterds' campaign I had done didn’t get used,

Zack saw it and he hired me on to create some initial

promotional artwork for Sucker Punch. My job was to take all of the

elements from the forthcoming film that Zack had described to me and mash it all together to see how

we can represent ALL of those cool elements in ONE image that would be the

first image shown to represent the movie. The pressure was CRAZY. The film comes out MARCH 25th,

by the way, and IT’S AWESOME!"

West Coast Avengers (Part 1
of 4), 2009
Latex, watercolor & Ink
on Canvas

Alex Pardee says: “There are a total of 4

panels in this series that, when hung next to each other, create one giant

comic book cover that stands 12 feet tall and 8 feet wide. It was my biggest

piece to date.

ON CREATING THIS PIECE FOR THE YOUTUBE OFFICES
I was given the

opportunity to paint and design an art installation for various walls

throughout the YouTube corporate offices in San Bruno, CA (which is why the

color scheme is heavy on the red & gray). However, after I had installed

all 4 panels on this huge wall on the main stairwell where EVERYONE had to walk

by who entered YouTube, I got notified 2 days later that some of the higher-ups

considered it 'demonic' and it got removed and relocated into hiding in the

back of the offices.

I was pissed off at first because I really loved the way

all 4 of the pieces looked when hung together, but then I just laughed it off and thought it was pretty funny that it

scared someone enough to remove it INSTANTLY. I couldn’t really figure out what

was 'demonic'about it, but then I submitted it to a magazine for publication

later in the year and they said the same thing, only they specifically said, 'We

are a mainstream publication and can’t publish anything with The Devil on it.'

And that’s when I realized that the moment you color something red, even if

it’s an ice cream cone with a pet squirrel, it automatically becomes evil.

I try to make it a point to include something red in anything

I do now, because I love The Devil! Obvoiusly."

Inglourious Basterds, 2009
Ink, Watercolor, and Digital
composition.
Created for an alternate
“Inglourious Basterds” Marketing campaign (in conjunction with Upper
Playground, SA Studios, & The Weinstein Company)

Alex Pardee says: “This piece took me 8, 18-20 hour days to create. I don’t know if that’s a long time

for other people, but I have always lacked the attention span to spend more

than 2 days on one piece previous to this one. I usually fall in love with an

idea and I just need to get it out as quickly as possible and move on

to the next idea.

ON TAKING HIS TIME TO KILL IT FOR A TARANTINO CAMPAIGN
However, this was a HUGE deal for me and since it was a PITCH

for a new marketing campaign rather than a sure thing, and since I am huge fan

of Quentin Tarantino’s films, I wanted to pitch the best presentation

I could. So for the first time ever, I spent time sketching, re-sketching,

re-thinking, taking reference photos, compositing paintings, learning more Photoshop

and so forth, all on an extremely tight deadline just to SEE what would happen

if I DID apply myself and allow myself to make mistakes and learn how to fix

them or change them to try to fit my ultimate vision. In the end the campaign didn’t

go through, but I was really satisfied with the process of doing it. From then

on I allowed myself a little more time when creating new work."

The Hunt For The Giant
Kitten Is Over, 2008
Pen & Ink on paper

Alex Pardee says: “When I'm working on an ink

drawing, I tend to fall into a trance, induced by the repetition of a million

tiny hash marks or brush strokes that each have a sort

of symbiotic relationship and survive only by co-existing with the next,

smaller hash mark.

"Each drawing I do I like to think of as an entire

self-contained ecosystem of random tiny life forms that, when looked at

closely, resemble a jam-packed orgy of unorganized shit that's feeding and

fucking each other sporadically. However, when looked at from the atmosphere,

that ecosystem looks like something semi-recognizable that my eyes might be

satisfied with (for a few minutes, at least).

"I

get satisfied that I spent X amount of hours adding a little extra detail that

nobody will ever bother to notice. This has always satisfied me, regardless of

my actual drawing ability. I could literally draw something that looks like a

pile of feces, but if I spent enough time building an ecosystem out of pen and

brush marks to give it some kind of character, I am happy with it."

The Delusionist, 2008
Ink on Clayboard

Alex Pardee says: “I was placed in a mental hospital when I was 14

after being diagnosed with severe anxiety and depression, and housed there

while the doctors were trying to find a medication that would help me. While I was there, I tried everything from playing

basketball, making leather bracelets, reading and sleeping, to making a tattoo

gun out of a walkman while I sat next to a self-proclaimed Nazi thrown in there for shooting

his father.

ON ART AS A CURE FOR ANXIETY AND DEPRESSION
"But nothing took my mind off of feeling sick. That is, until I

grabbed some paper and started scribbling. Before I knew it, there was a small

stack of paper filled with terrible drawings of what looked like gingerbread

men and retarded spiders boxing each other. Then 4 hours had passed and I

realized I hadn’t been thinking about being sick. So as cheesy as it sounds,

from that moment, I felt that the only way I would ever feel better and the

only way to escape was to draw, and to imagine these new creatures and worlds.

"In a way, this is a painting of myself in the

hospital, clutching a security blanket that I’m imagining has turned into a

parade-like float full of monsters, allowing me to be distracted enough for

time to pass until I feel better."

Escaped Convict(ion), 2006
Pen & Ink, Watercolor

Alex Pardee says: “This image is by far the

most popular image I have created up to day. I personally love this image, but

probably for a different reason than anyone else.

This piece was originally

created for a band that hired me as art director, but when I completed it,

the band became hesitant, and ultimately backed out and went a different

direction.

ON STARTING HIS COMPANY ZEROFRIENDS
But I had grown close to the image during its creation, and so I

didn’t want it to just get thrown in the rejects pile, so I took it and put the

image out as one of the first prints available through my startup art &

print company called Zerofriends, and the print ended up selling out almost

immediately. In the last 4 years, this image has been licensed by a lot of

companies and has appeared on shoes, hats, websites, skateboards, and

has been bootlegged like crazy."

In Love & Death, 2004
Ink & Watercolor on
Paper
Album cover for THE USED

Alex Pardee says: “In 2000, I quit my

job as an operations supervisor at a credit card company and dropped

out of the community college that I had been going to for 6 years. I decided to

try being an artist full time.

"I managed to get various small jobs, and in early 2004 I was working on a black & white comic

book with Sam Kieth called OJO when I got offered a job by Warner
Bros Records as the art director for the band THE USED.

ON HOW SIGNING ON WITH THE USED HELPED LAUNCH A BIGGER FAN BASE
"In an attempt to help

re-brand the image of the band, I worked for 5 months creating so many

different album covers, styles and looks to give the band a more artistic

representation to fit their music, and after about 30 different attempts at a

cover, it was THIS image that I turned in as a last final attempt a day before

our final approval meeting, and everyone unanimously

agreed that this represented the band in a new and exciting way.

"This experience was

significant in my career not only because the 'heart in a noose' image became

somewhat iconic, but because I was able to do

something with this project that a lot of artists hadn’t been allowed to do,

which was getting the support of the band and the label to include my name and

signature in some of the advertising and on the record. With the band selling more than

600,000 copies, that meant that my art was reaching

so many more people than I could have ever done before. From that point on

I was able to use this as a springboard to continue getting more creative

opportunities."