Techniques w/ Toby Neve - Grinding Lead White by Hand

An installment in the series of Technique related content featured on The FAA Collective

Dear Patrons,

As always, thank you for your support! This week we would like to share with you a video featuring The Florence Academy of Art instructor Toby Neve demonstrating his method of grinding lead white (also known as flake white) oil paint by hand. In this video you will learn about the properties of various oils as binding mediums, the process of grinding oil paint to the desired consistency, and how to tube it. 

Oil painting first gained popularity in the 15th century and is the process of painting with pigments with a drying oil as the binder. Today many manufacturers of oil paint include materials other than strictly oil and pigment to their tubed paints which act as stabilizers, driers, or fillers. Grinding your own paint ensures that the paint is free from these additional ingredients if that is your preference, and allows for the customization of many rheological properties of the paint. Additionally, hand-ground paint is often far more economical, particularly for the more expensive commercially available paints such as lead white! 

Please note that the handling of this particular pigment is to be done extremely carefully and always with the use of gloves and a protective mask. This technique can be reproduced safely with any other non toxic pigment.

We hope you thoroughly enjoy this video! 

More about Toby:

Toby Neve is a British painter born in 1992 whose specialized education in drawing and painting began in 2011 at the London Atelier of Representational Art, before he joined The Florence Academy of Art in 2012. Upon graduating in 2015, and having started teaching as a student-instructor in his third year of studies, he was awarded the Fourth-Year prize, working for a year under Daniel Graves, next-door to his private studio.

Toby teaches drawing and painting in the First and Second year programs and gives lectures on the materials of drawing and painting. He works in a private studio space on the FAA campus, which students are welcome to visit out of working hours. He was awarded a first place ARC scholarship in 2014 and was a 2015 Hudson River Fellow.

To see more of Toby’s work please visit: 

Instagram: @toby.neve