It's My 10-Year Anniversary?!

I can't believe that this January marked 10 years since I started this blog. It almost passed by without me noticing!

In celebration, lets have the ultimate Throwback Thursday and take a look at some of my favorite scenery projects, models, and tutorials from the past decade.

 

 

2012

It all started with such humble beginnings. I had just moved back to New Jersey, and had a little studio set up in the bedroom of our apartment:

 

 

This was the year I really started dialing in my Vampire Counts conversions. Marduk the Ghoul King and the Varghulf were some of my best kitbash and sculpting work.  (The links under each photo will take you to the relevant blog post.)

https://robhawkinshobby.blogspot.com/2012/04/varghulf-and-poll-results.html

https://robhawkinshobby.blogspot.com/2012/10/marduk-ghoul-king.html

 

I also put together a two-part tutorial for converting and painting dire wolves. (This was ages before GW would eventually release their new Dire Wolf kit!)

 

https://robhawkinshobby.blogspot.com/2012/11/modeling-and-painting-dire-wolves-part-1.html

https://robhawkinshobby.blogspot.com/2012/11/modeling-and-painting-dire-wolves-part-2.html

 

2012 was the year I started my career as a freelance scenery artist, making terrain for different miniatures companies. The Wrath of Kings Goritsi City and Wild West Exodus town were among my first large "display table" projects:

 

https://robhawkinshobby.blogspot.com/2012/07/wrath-of-kings-diorama-part-1.html

https://robhawkinshobby.blogspot.com/2012/12/its-wild-west-x-mas.html

 

2013

The Wild West Exodus project bled over into the following year, and I made a tutorial about my process for building and painting the desert rocks:

 

https://robhawkinshobby.blogspot.com/2013/03/painting-desert-mesas.html

 

I also published a post about using styrene plastic rods and tubes to make pipe details for scenery. (Fun fact: This is my most-viewed post of all time, by like a mile. Seriously– This one has over 60K views, and the next highest post is about 25K. I suspect there are a lot of Borrowers out there who stumble across my blog while looking for solutions to their tiny plumbing problems.) 

https://robhawkinshobby.blogspot.com/2013/05/terrain-tutorial-pipes.html

A highlight of the year would have to be the diorama I made for the Rivet Wars game. It remains one of my favorite builds:

 

Rivet Wars Diorama

2014

During the early years of my blog, I was producing a lot of articles for No Quarter Magazine by Privateer Press, featuring all manner of conversions for Warmachine, Hordes, and the Iron Kingdoms role-playing game:

 

No Quarter Posts

 

2014 was when the End Times began for Warhammer, and I finished up my Terrorgheist conversion:

 

https://robhawkinshobby.blogspot.com/2014/10/marduk-ghoul-king-and-wolkhar.html

 

I also worked on some pretty ambitious terrain projects, namely the Dark Age lava boards, and the hugh diorama for Arcadia Quest. Each of them had LED lighting, and the Arcadia Quest diorama even had fiber optic lights for the stars in the backdrop:

 

Arcadia Quest

https://robhawkinshobby.blogspot.com/2014/06/dark-age-demo-tables-lava.html

 

I wrote up a tutorial for elements of each of those projects– making Flagstone streets, and building metal steps:

 

https://robhawkinshobby.blogspot.com/2014/07/terrain-tutorial-flagstone-streets.html

https://robhawkinshobby.blogspot.com/2014/02/terrain-tutorial-simple-stairs.html

 

2015

I spent the entire year working my way through the terminators in the Space Hulk board game, meticulously replacing all of their Blood Angels iconography with Black Templars heraldry. And I wrote up a tutorial for painting Black Templars. 

 

https://robhawkinshobby.blogspot.com/2015/11/painting-tutorial-black-templars.html

 

Age of Sigmar also launched this year. I painted a ton of Skaven models, and put together a tutorial for batch-painting Skaven Plague Monks:

https://robhawkinshobby.blogspot.com/2015/05/painting-plethora-of-plague-monks-part-2.html

 

My big scenery projects that year were some industrial-themed terrain for Wild West Exodus:

 

https://robhawkinshobby.blogspot.com/2015/09/wwx-terrain-industrial-complex.html

https://robhawkinshobby.blogspot.com/2015/09/wwx-terrain-mine-tunnels.html

2016

As with the Space Hulk terminators, I spent 2016 working on a year-long boxed game project. This time it was Dreadfleet. I still think these are some of the most beautiful miniatures GW has ever produced:

 

Dreadfleet

 

2016 is also a landmark year for me because it was the year that I launched my Skull Forge Scenics line of resin scenery and basing elements:

 

https://www.etsy.com/shop/skullforgescenics

 

As part of my ongoing (at the time) Halloween Terrain Tutorial, I made some graveyard-themed hills...

 

https://robhawkinshobby.blogspot.com/2016/10/terrain-tutorial-graveyard-hills.html

 

...And got to use them in a game with my friend Chris Walton. The rules for Age of Sigmar were shaping up pretty well with the first General's Handbook.

 

https://robhawkinshobby.blogspot.com/2016/11/more-age-of-sigmar.html

 

I compiled a post with the entire history of my Warhammer army The Legion of the Infernal Skull:

 

https://robhawkinshobby.blogspot.com/2016/11/the-legion-of-infernal-skull-legacy-of.html

 

And I worked on a huge castle ruin with accompanying swamp boards for the Rune Wars miniatures game:

 

https://robhawkinshobby.blogspot.com/2016/09/runewars-terrain-part-4-painting-and.html

 

2017

The scenery work only increased in 2017. At one point I almost ran out of space in my workshop for all the boards that were waiting to ship out for convention season!

 

https://robhawkinshobby.blogspot.com/2017/04/wrath-of-kings-game-board.html

https://robhawkinshobby.blogspot.com/2017/05/dark-age-crystal-caverns.html

https://robhawkinshobby.blogspot.com/2017/05/wild-west-exodus-hex-swamp.html

https://robhawkinshobby.blogspot.com/2017/10/star-wars-scenery-showcase-sullust.html

https://robhawkinshobby.blogspot.com/2017/10/star-wars-scenery-showcase-lothol.html

https://robhawkinshobby.blogspot.com/2017/11/wwx-watcher-hive-final-board.html

https://robhawkinshobby.blogspot.com/2017/09/something-wicked-this-way-comes.html

 

2018

One of my favorite projects of the year was this converted unit of Blood Knights. As with the Dire Wolves, this regiment was a labor of love and predated the new plastic kit by a few years:

 

https://robhawkinshobby.blogspot.com/2018/10/converting-blood-knights.html

 

I also took on a scenery project that spanned nearly the entire year, resulting in the first of my "Project Log" series. The Warscryer Citadel remains one of the nicest and most visually interesting scenery kits that GW has ever produced.

 

Project Log: Warscryer Citadel

 

Perhaps my most challenging terrain project to date was the harbor and ship that I built for Wild West Exodus. It might be the most well documented, too, because its construction was broken down over a series of ten blog posts.

 

Project Log: WWX Harbor

 

2019

This was the year that the Marvel Crisis Protocol miniatures game debuted. Working on projects like this sometimes gives me a peek into the future, but it's a double-edged sword because I have to keep all of my hard work under wraps until the project has been officially announced. (I still have two terrain boards from early 2021 that I haven't been able to talk about yet; there's some awesome stuff coming!)

The Subway was the first of a few Marvel-themed boards that I built. It was so nice, I built it twice (I mean, literally, they asked me to make a second, identical board so they could have it at shows in different regions).

 

https://robhawkinshobby.blogspot.com/2019/08/subway-station-terrain-showcase.html

 

My favorite bit was making the newspaper litter, and I posted a tutorial about it:

 

https://robhawkinshobby.blogspot.com/2019/08/terrain-tutorial-making-newspaper-litter.html

 

On the Warhammer 40K and Age of Sigmar fronts, I worked on a pair of Doomsday Arks, magnetized so I can swap them out for Ghost Arks...

 

Project Log: Doomsday Arks

...and I finished off the entire set of Endless Spells from the Malign Sorcery box:

 

https://robhawkinshobby.blogspot.com/2019/12/endless-spells-showcase.html

 

2020

And then Covid hit. I wasn't playing games in the shop anymore, and the opportunity for making display boards for conventions was diminished, but I kept up with my smaller scenery pieces and models. I came up with the story for progressing Korak the Grim and his minions into the Mortal Realms of Age of Sigmar:

 

https://robhawkinshobby.blogspot.com/2020/01/the-congregation-of-crimson-shroud.html

 

And, I started work on some of my more complicated pieces of undead-themed scenery– The watchtower and statue garden. I began work on the Tombs of Tithing in 2020, but wouldn't finish them until the following year.

 

Project Log: Watchtower

https://robhawkinshobby.blogspot.com/2020/09/terrain-showcase-house-and-statue-garden.html

2021

This was a year of completing projects that were either long-running, or that I had wanted to get to for quite some time. The Primaris-scale Emperor's Champion and Dreadnought, and the Inquisitor-scale Champion are some of my finest work, and I'm glad that I didn't rush through the champions years ago when the results and work would have been less fulfilling.

 

https://robhawkinshobby.blogspot.com/2021/12/primus-invidicus-redemptor-dreadnought.html

Project Log: Emperor's Champion

In 2021, I also got a smart phone, so I'm able to take better pictures, and shoot rotations of my models and scenery and make video tutorials on my YouTube Channel: 

 

 

 

This has been a hell of a ride so far, and I want to take a moment to thank everyone for reading and following along! It always makes me smile when I hear that people are inspired by my work, and use the tutorials and information that I post in their own hobby projects.

If you've been here from the very start, I salute you! If you've recently found my site, please take the time to check out the back catalogue. Use the labels on the sidebar to find projects by category or name. (If you are on a mobile device, you may have to switch to view the "web version" to see this list; I don't think it's visible in the simplified mobile presentation.)

 

 

'Til next time!