Ironheads are industrial workwear, not armour. The look you are after is a mining crew that happens to be armed: hi-vis panels bolted over dark, oily plate, brass fittings gone dull, and honest wear on everything that touches rock. That means the weathering is not optional decoration here - it is what separates a Prospector from a yellow Space Marine.
The signature look
Bright safety yellow on the panels a foreman wants seen - shoulder plates, helmet, rig collar, drill housing - over a dark grey or near-black bodysuit and machinery. Brass and bronze on pipework, buckles and lamp housings. Skin ruddy and weathered, beards in every colour a beard comes in. Dust in the lower third of every model.
The hi-vis yellow
Yellow is the difficulty in this scheme and all of it comes down to the undercoat. Yellow over black needs five coats and still looks olive in the recesses.
- Undercoat Wraithbone, or spray the model black and then zenithal Grey Seer from above. Either gives yellow something bright to sit on.
- Basecoat Averland Sunset, two thin coats. It is a warm ochre-yellow rather than a lemon, and it is deliberately duller than the finished panel.
- Shade the panel lines and rivets with Casandora Yellow. For a warmer, more worn look use Seraphim Sepia instead - on a mining rig that reads as grease.
- Layer Yriel Yellow over the raised faces, leaving the shade in the recesses.
- Highlight Flash Gitz Yellow along the top edges, then a final sparing catch of Screaming Skull on the sharpest corners only.
Vallejo painters can run Yellow Ochre, Gold Yellow, Sunblast Yellow and Deep Yellow through the same ramp. Army Painter Fanatic gives you Daemonic Yellow with Lava Orange for the warm shadows.
The fast route
Undercoat Wraithbone and put a single coat of Iyanden Yellow contrast on every hi-vis panel. It shades and colours in one pass and lands very close to the studio scheme. If you want the deeper, more orange-gold cast that suits Exo-kyn and the heavy rigs, use Nazdreg Yellow instead. Either way, one Flash Gitz Yellow edge afterwards lifts it considerably for about a minute of work per model.
Dark plate, brass and machinery
The dark underlayer: basecoat Abaddon Black, drybrush lightly with Eshin Grey, then edge with Dawnstone. Keep it dark - the value gap between the black plate and the yellow panels is what makes the hi-vis look hi-vis.
Exposed machinery, drills and pistons: Leadbelcher, shaded Nuln Oil, edged Runefang Steel. Ironhead gear is worked hardware, so let the shade pool in the joints.
Brass: basecoat Balthasar Gold, shade Agrax Earthshade, layer Sycorax Bronze, then a fine highlight of Runelord Brass on the raised edges. For pipework that has been damp for a century, stipple a very little Nurgling Green into the recesses, or glaze Nihilakh Oxide and wipe most of it back off.
Faces and beards
Skin: Bugman's Glow, shaded Reikland Fleshshade, layered Cadian Fleshtone, highlighted Kislev Flesh on the nose, brow and cheekbones. Ironheads are outdoor workers, so let the ruddiness stay.
Beards are where you get variety in a gang of near-identical silhouettes, so paint each one differently:
- Dark brown - Rhinox Hide, shade Agrax Earthshade, drybrush Mournfang Brown.
- Ginger - Skrag Brown, shade Agrax Earthshade, drybrush Fire Dragon Bright.
- Grey and white - Dawnstone, wash Nuln Oil, drybrush Administratum Grey, then Ulthuan Grey on the tips.
- Black - Abaddon Black drybrushed Eshin Grey, which reads better than any true black at this scale.
Drybrushing is the right tool for all four: it catches the sculpted texture and takes seconds. The drybrushing guide covers loading the brush properly if your results are coming out chalky.
Weathering the rig
Do this last, and do it in this order. Sponge-chip the yellow panels with Rhinox Hide first, concentrating on edges and corners, then add a few smaller Leadbelcher chips inside the brown ones - a chip that has gone through paint and primer to bare metal has a dark rim. Stipple Typhus Corrosion around bolt heads and the bases of pistons, then stipple Ryza Rust sparingly on top of it. Finally, drybrush Zandri Dust up the boots, shins and the underside of any rig, fading out about a third of the way up the model.
Tips and common mistakes
- The undercoat decides the yellow. No amount of extra coats fixes yellow applied over black. Bone or light grey first, every time.
- Do not chip everything. Chipping reads as wear only where wear actually happens: leading edges, corners, knees, the mouth of a drill housing. Chips in the middle of a flat panel look like a mistake because they are one.
- Keep the dark plate genuinely dark. Highlighting the black up to mid-grey kills the hi-vis contrast that the whole scheme is built on.
- Vary the beards, not the yellow. The uniform panels are what makes them a crew; the faces are what makes them individuals.
- Two thin coats, then stop. Averland Sunset is thick and tempting to lay on heavily, and brush marks in yellow are extremely visible.
Once the palette suits you, open this scheme in the generator to swap brands or try a hotter orange-yellow.