October 14, 2008 is a day I will always remember. Dave Deal, also known as "Big Deal" passed away on this day after fighting some health problems. When I was a kid growing up, I'd go through my dads collection of Hot VW's magazines and always be fascinated with the Jackman Wheels ads. I would take the magazines to school and would try to "re-draw" them, with no luck mind you, usually during Math class. Over the years my drawing skills improved and was told on numerous occasions that my work looked a lot like Big Deals stuff, a HUGE compliment. In 2001, I saw an ad in a magazine for "Big Deal, commercial Illustrator". I called the number and Dave answered the phone. He was very pleasant to talk to and I told him I was a big fan. I asked If I could e-mail him some of my work so he could critique it. No problem he said, and within 20 minutes Dave gave me more pointers about style and contrast then any art teacher had ever done for me in my whole life. That same year, I met Dave at his house in Vista, he showed me around, went through some old "original" prints he had done over the years and then, kinda gave me the once over and said, "you wanna see something I've been working on?" He opens up the bottom drawer of his drawing cabinet and pulls out a stack of 11x17 art paper with sketches of numerous cars. It was the original sketches for characters for the movie "Cars" produced by Pixar. Very cool stuff and I was fortunate to see them long before the public did. We spent most of the day together, he drove me down the street in his Blue Baja bug to his favorite Mexican place and I bought him lunch and a couple beers. The last time I saw Dave was at the 2003 or 2004 Baja 1000 driving his Meyers Manx down the main street in Ensenada. It was November, chilly and almost dusk when I saw this Manx driving slowly down the street with a bearded man up on the wheel with a smile on his face. He had told me he was going and was bringing some friends from New York with him and they would watch the race from San Felipe. I thought to myself, "He's gotta be freezing his ass off!!" Dave and I stayed in touch over the years via e-mail and was usually pretty good about forwarding me stuff about his political beliefs... funny guy. In early August of this year, I e-mailed Dave and told him I was ready to have him do a painting for me so I could say that I had my own personal Dave Deal design. I sent him some pictures of my race car and he said he would get to it after he did some stuff for Pixar, they were doing "Cars 2" I guess. Early October I got an e-mail, it was Dave saying he was sorry he hadn't gotten my design done, he had been in the hospital for the last 8 days and was not feeling too well. I told him not too worry about my design and just get better. On October 15th, I went to my favorite off road web site, and in the forums someone posted that Dave had passed away the day before. It was a dark day for me, a true legend was gone. I went to the viewing a couple days ago and as I write this today, Dave is being layed to earth. It was nice to listen to his friends talk of him, the Dave I didn't know. It was a celebration of his life and I think he would have enjoyed himself....now that I think about it, I'm sure he did. God speed Dave, Travel well.
