A continuum-based plasticity approach is considered to model the anisotropic hardening response of hexagonal closed packed (hcp) materials. A Cazacu-Plunkett-Barlat (CPB06) yield surface is modified to create anisotropic hardening in terms of the accumulated plastic strain. The anisotropy and asymmetry parameters are replaced with saturation-type functions and the new modified model is then optimized globally to fit the material response. Furthermore, the effect of the number of linear stress transformations performed on the deviatoric stress tensor is investigated on the capability of the model to capture the response from the experiments. By increasing the number of stress transformations, more flexibility is obtained. However, increasing the number of stress transformations increases the arithmetic calculations involved in the material model. The proposed approach is an effective and time efficient method to create material models with complex evolving tension/compression behavior.