Year 4 Explore the Art of Lucian Freud 23rd January 2026 Creative Arts This week, Year 4 have been diving into the world of portrait painting through the work of celebrated artist Lucian Freud. Pupils looked closely at some of his portraits and were fascinated by the way he built up skin tones using many different variants of brown, rather than relying on just one shade. They also observed how his expressive brushstrokes helped to create depth and texture. Inspired by this, the children then had a go at being colour‑mixing experts themselves. Each pupil was given a tiny section of one of Freud’s artworks and challenged to mix their own matching variant of brown. With impressive patience and creativity, they added small amounts of different paints to adjust their colours until they were as close as possible to the original. Along the way, pupils learned new artistic vocabulary such as tint, shade, tone, and variant. They used this language confidently when explaining their colour‑mixing process to their partners. Year 4 should feel very proud of their careful observation and growing artistic knowledge. Well done, artists!