Exclude Latest Article From View?
You have to create a view with two displays of type block. Arrange some region or panel method to display them in side by side fashion.

Create view, select its type as node, choose fields and filters according to your requirement.

For View display having latest item:

Click Pager from your view settings and define Items per page as 1 and set sort order Date created/posted as descending.

For View display having next three items:

Click Pager settings and define Items per page as 3 and set Offset as 1 and define the same date order as for the previous view display.

Thumbnails settings:

While selecting your fields particularly selecting image field (must be part of your post's content type) as thumbnail for post, choose image style. The image style are thumbnail sizes and formats. See the interface on example.com/admin/config/media/image-styles to add your custom image forma-tors so that a proper thumbnail can appear on each view display.