Alentejo wedding illustrator
Évora is 149 km from Rui Charnock's Lisbon studio, about two hours and a quarter by road, which makes most Alentejo weddings a day trip with travel charged at cost beyond the included radius. He draws in ink and watercolour on the day, at roughly two finished illustrations per booked hour.
The Alentejo is mostly space, and space is the hardest thing on this list to draw. Get it wrong and you have a wedding standing in the middle of nothing.
Travel and logistics
| By road from Lisbon | 149 km |
|---|---|
| Drive time | 2 h 16 min |
| Travel charge | At cost, quoted before you book |
| Night before | No |
| Minimum booking | 6 hours |
How much paper to leave empty
One cork oak, one whitewashed wall, one horizon two thirds of the way up. That is the Alentejo, and the temptation is to fill the rest in because it looks unfinished.
It is not unfinished. An Alentejo drawing works when the people are small and the paper is mostly untouched, which is the opposite instinct to a Lisbon room. I plan those sheets before the day rather than during it.
Two in the afternoon is unusable
Inland Alentejo in July and August runs to forty degrees, and between two and six the light is straight down and colourless. Washes dry on contact — the bleed the whole style depends on simply does not happen.
So the illustration hours go early and late, and the middle of the day is for guest portraits somewhere with a roof. That is a scheduling note, not a complaint: the six o'clock light out there is worth planning around.
Whitewash, ochre and one blue
The built palette of the region is already almost exactly the palette on this site — lime white, the ochre band painted round the bottom of every wall, and a blue that turns up on doors and window frames.
It means Alentejo drawings need almost no colour decisions. I use what the buildings use.
Day trip or night before
Évora at 149 km and a bit over two hours is a comfortable day. Estremoz (172 km) and Monsaraz (197 km) are at the edge of it — if you want me from getting-ready, that becomes the night before, and the accommodation goes on the quote at cost rather than appearing later.
Marrying in The Alentejo? Send the date and the venue and I will tell you if I am free.
Check your date WhatsAppVenues drawn in The Alentejo
No venue in this region is named on the site yet. Venue pages go up once there is work from the venue to put on them, which is the whole point of having them — a list of places I would be willing to drive to is not information.
Nearby, and what changes
The coast is the other Alentejo. Comporta is ninety minutes from Lisbon rather than two and a quarter, and draws in an entirely different register.
Going further south, the Algarve is another hour and a half beyond Évora and crosses into overnight territory.
What you actually get
- About two finished illustrations for every hour booked — roughly twelve across a six-hour wedding, plus fifty to seventy guest portraits if portraits are included.Getting ready, the ceremony, the speeches, the first dance.
- Guest portraits handed over on the night, as favours.Two or three minutes a face. People queue for them.
- Finished in studio, delivered within two weeks.Scanned at archival resolution. Prints and the original both come to you.
- From €X. Travel included within X km of Lisbon.Full breakdown on the pricing page. Nothing behind a form.
Check your date
Tell me when and where. If I am free, I will come back with what it costs and roughly how the day would run — usually the same evening.