Live wedding artist, Sintra
Sintra is 24 km from Rui Charnock's Lisbon studio, about forty minutes by road, which puts a Sintra wedding inside the included travel radius with no overnight charge. He draws in ink and watercolour on the day, at roughly two finished illustrations per booked hour.
Twenty-odd minutes from Lisbon and a completely different problem to draw. Sintra is dark, green and vertical, and almost nothing about it behaves like a normal venue.
Travel and logistics
| By road from Lisbon | 24 km |
|---|---|
| Drive time | 38 minutes |
| Travel charge | Included within X km |
| Night before | No |
| Minimum booking | 4 hours |
The light under the trees
Sintra sits in its own microclimate — cooler, wetter, and often under cloud when Lisbon is clear. Under that canopy the light goes green and stays even all afternoon, which is genuinely lovely for watercolour and unhelpful for anyone shooting.
Damp is the practical issue. Paper takes longer to dry, so washes stay open and bleed further. I lean into it rather than fight it: Sintra drawings come out looser and wetter than Algarve ones.
Palaces and steps
Most Sintra venues are built up a hill, and the interesting parts are on different levels. I work light enough to move between them quickly, because standing still in Sintra means missing half the day.
It is also the one place where I will ask for the running order twice. A five-minute walk between a ceremony terrace and a dining room is five minutes I am not drawing, and there are usually three of those in a Sintra day.
Getting there
Inside the no-travel-fee radius: 24 km, about forty minutes. The one thing worth planning is the road up into the hills on a summer Saturday, which is slow — so I arrive early.
Marrying in Sintra? Send the date and the venue and I will tell you if I am free.
Check your date WhatsAppVenues drawn in Sintra
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
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.