Beauty before Death

I’m not really a fan of snakes but I liked the colors in this design.
I wanted to make some of the aspects a bit three-dimensional so I used gumpaste to bring out some of the parts. Gumpaste dries nice and hard and is therefore nice to paint on. I took all up about 15 hrs of work on this cake. I modeled the gumpaste parts and while those were drying made up the cake, which was just a chocolate (forgot to get a shot of the batter - sorry) covered in vanilla buttercream and fondant.
I left the gumpaste to sit overnight so it was well dried and would then not go all sticky when you applied the colours, or absorb them. The painting took me about 6-7 hrs total (not done in one sitting). The colours were a combination of gel, paste and powder food colours (diluted with vodka) and also Americolor writing pens for a couple of spots. I forgot to take more step-by-step shots, as I was too engrossed in the painting!
I decided to take it over to my parents’ place to do the cutting - for their housewarming - so added some writing to the board as an afterthought.
That's it!