1. Clay - clay is good for that rough-hewn, smudgy-edgy boldly expressionistic type sculpting. Just grab a big handful. Slap it on! Work it out! Cut deep furrows with the side of your hand; build and shape powerful folds of rippling musculature. You can also opt for the smooth approach, but with smooth clay a certain overall sliminess of appearance can take over.
2. Marble - marble is very difficult to work, but in the hands of a master - nothing can beat it for sheer verisimilitude. Need I say David?
3. Wax - for a fully-clothed figure, you can get an eerie likeness in wax. But for a real shirtless ab-clenching posedown-worthy torso, the effect is simply not fleshtastic enough. Ironically, wax can approach closer to the appearance of flesh than any of these other media. The problem is that it gets that close...and yet...it's off. Subtly off. That subtle degree of "off" leaves your rock-hard wax abs looking pretty creepy for some reason. I believe that's what they call an "uncanny valley" phenomenon going on there.
4. Ivory - the problem with ivory, apart from the moral problem, is that it's entirely the wrong shape for any life-sized piece. It can be used for abs in miniature with satisfactory results. If money is no object and you want to go all psycho with it, an old-fashioned chryselephantine sculpture could be potentially awesome.
5. Bronze - see, the thing with bronze is...it's basically the same as clay. They start with a clay sculpture, but then they put it through some process whereby it comes out the other end as bronze (this is called the Bessemer Process). I believe a wax mold is employed, and then when the wax melts off, they hit it with a hammer to shatter the outer shell and expose that sweet bronze. The details of the process are truly fascinating.
6. Pasta - It's pretty impressive what you can do with the right-shaped pasta! Macaroni are practically ideal to the purpose.
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