After finishing the test model I moved straight on to do another "production" model - that is, now that I'm happy with the paint scheme, I wanted to see how quickly I could knock out another model using that scheme. The test model took about 3 hours to paint, but this one took much less: no more than 1.5 or 2 hours.
I am now painting two more models in a batch as I think that will also save time. Then I only have to paint the sergeant and I've finished the first squad, or one third of the final army.