My friend Michael Leonard, who has died aged 90, joined the agency Artist Partners as a jobbing illustrator in the 1950s and was constantly in demand until he decided to become a full-time painter in the early 1970s.
Michael was a superb technician and produced memorable work, including covers for the Sunday Times magazine with portraits of, among others, Paul Getty and Mick Jagger. The magazine also commissioned him to imagine how celebrities might look as they aged, with results that were often uncannily accurate in their predictions.
