Douro Valley wedding illustrator
The Douro Valley is 380 km from Rui Charnock's Lisbon studio and about four and three-quarter hours by road, which makes a Douro wedding a two-night booking with travel and accommodation quoted at cost before you book. He draws in ink and watercolour on the day, at about two finished illustrations per hour.
The most drawable landscape in Portugal, and the furthest from my front door. Both of those matter to your booking.
Travel and logistics
| By road from Lisbon | 380 km |
|---|---|
| Drive time | 4 h 46 min |
| Travel charge | At cost, plus one night |
| Night before | Yes |
| Minimum booking | 6 hours |
Terraces are a gift to a line drawing
The whole valley is horizontal bands stepping up a slope. In ink that is almost nothing — a dozen lines — and it reads instantly as the Douro and nowhere else.
It is the one region where I will usually give the landscape as much of the paper as the people, because here the landscape is why you chose it.
Heat, and what it does to watercolour
The valley traps heat. In August a wash can dry before it has finished spreading, which kills the bleed the whole style depends on.
The answer is to work wetter and earlier, and to keep the afternoon for guest portraits in the shade.
Planning the trip
Peso da Régua is 380 km and about four and three-quarter hours from Lisbon, so this is a two-night booking: down the day before, back the day after. It goes on your quote as a line item, at cost.
Book it early. I will not take two Douro weddings on consecutive days.
Marrying in The Douro Valley? Send the date and the venue and I will tell you if I am free.
Check your date WhatsAppVenues drawn in The Douro Valley
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
Porto is fifty minutes downstream from Régua and 348 km from Lisbon, so a Porto wedding sits in the same overnight band — the coverage page has the numbers.
If the Douro is out of budget on travel alone, the Alentejo gives you the same big-landscape drawing at a third of the distance.
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.