How long I spend on each model differs from unit to unit and has decreased over time (it should have as I have already painted 131 of these lads for Hochland) for the unit of halbardiers it's about 1 1/2 to 2 hours per model. Of course characters take a lot longer. And I don't count assembling. Many small conversions have been done to the spearmen by swapping the heads to give some variation (but keep the powerful uniformy of empire regiments) The handgunners are harder to pull this trick off so I skipped those and instead give them different coloured leather parts, heads, shoes and the like.
The captain with dragonbow took me 7 or 8 hours of painting (of which 45 minutes were spend on the freehand Griffin on the shield). The Greatswords I'm working on at the moment are comming close to this per model (I think I'm around 4-5 hours per model and now just over halfway) to this as I've chosen a terrible coloursceme for these lads as can be seen in this WIP:
I wanted to incorporate the powerful Red-Green coloursceme into these models. But as they are mostly armour and on most models only the right arm has a uniform visible I needed to incorporate this into on sleef. I could use the GW coloursceme of each 'puff' a colour but then I remembered seeing a 6th edition Handgunner on Gamesday once that had this cool thing with one colour in the recesses and one on the higher parts and I tried it out on this musician. Then came the terrible job to apply the same paintjob to 19 other models (10 of them are now done, the other 10 have the recesses fully painted but green needs still 3 highlights)
All the other parts have gotten their base colours (hats, shoes, paper etc etc) and I have started the freehand on the banner (the Hochland standard depicted in UK WD 326: Colours of the Empire article) Still lots to do though, the metal needs highlighting just as all the smaller details that I have base coloured. I could use them in battle now but they are not 'up to army standards'.
To answer the inevitable question
Q: "Do you base?"
A: "Sometimes I do, sometimes I don't. I prefer to base my models but when I don't have any spraypaint around I don't. I use mostly Vallejo Gamecolour paints btw with some GW paints (foundation, browns and some others)"
@Tall Ed: Hmm, good question, lets get it from the display and check it out... (I forgot)
-Cannon: Tin Bitz, Brazzen Brass, Dwarf Bronze
-Wood: Scorched brown base, then paint a grain on it with Dark Flesh, Highlight this with Bestial Brown and finally, very thin with (and this is where it gets tricky) Bronzed flesh or Vermin Brown.
Edit: I see the problem with the cannon, it's two different sides and colours. One side the last highlight is Bubonic brown, but I didn't like it too much so the other side has been done in a different extreme highlight Bronzed Flesh (because that's a bit darker and shades better into Bestial Brown and Dark Flesh)
