Beauty before Death

So, I was trying to decide on a t-shirt and I narrowed it down to three, but I kept coming back to this one. And somehow convinced myself that this was the easiest of the three. Ha! Never having created a full size bust made of cake, I really had no concept of the time involved. Throw in the zillions of details of this painting, and I spent many a late night over the course of a week on this! The cake itself is a yummy vanilla with vanilla buttercream filling and white chocolate ganache on the outside. I wanted to make the cake look as much like a painting as possible, so the perfectionist in me had to let go a little and be loosey goosey on the details to make it look like the painting with color splashes everywhere. After I ganached the face, I discovered that the ganache was EXACTLY the pale yellow color I wanted the face anyway. So I decided to take a chance and skip the fondant. I painted on the ganache with a mix of shortening and powdered food color. It worked like a charm! The details are mostly modeling chocolate. The snakes are modeling chocolate over Rice Krispies Treats. The Flower, butterfly, leaves and wings on the bird are wafer paper. The bird itself is modeling chocolate over aluminum foil. I needed it to be very light. I airbrushed the background with food color (because I don't have a regular airbrush). Had a blast making this!