Wedding illustrator, Cascais and Estoril

From about midday the bay acts as a second light source, bouncing up under everything. Faces lose their shadows, white linen goes blue-white, and a wash laid on paper in that light looks two shades darker once you carry it indoors.

So the colour on a Cascais drawing goes down lighter than it looks like it should, and the ink line does more of the work. It suits the place — this coast is a line-drawing coast, all railings, awnings and masts.

The Estoril and Cascais venues that couples want are mostly turn-of-the-century houses with a terrace bolted onto the sea view. The terrace is enormous and the rooms behind it are not.

That decides where I stand. Indoors I work at the edge with a board, never with a table, because a table in one of those rooms costs a guest a seat.

The nortada comes up most summer afternoons and it is stronger here than in Lisbon. Loose watercolour paper and an onshore wind do not co-operate, so everything gets clipped down and the sheets get smaller.

It is worth knowing if your drinks reception is on an exposed terrace: that is exactly when guest portraits are hardest, and exactly when moving the table two metres into the lee of the building fixes it.

Inside the included radius, so no travel line and no accommodation line. Close enough that I will come and look at the venue before the day, which on this coast mostly means working out which way the terrace faces.