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This is a topic close to my heart. You can’t imagine how much time and effort I’ve spent wrapping my head around it. In my studio, I use my own plasticine recipe — one I developed after countless hours of research and experimentation, chasing the results I needed for my work.
But first, you might be wondering: why would anyone bother making their own plasticine?
Two reasons. First, I use a lot of it — and the more I teach, the more I need. Second, here in New Zealand where my studio is based (and honestly, in most parts of the world), good-quality plasticine is expensive. A 900g (2 lb) block of NSP (Chavant) costs around NZ$46 (US$24 / €21). It used to be closer to $32–$40, but tariffs have pushed the price up. In the US, the same product runs about half that. If you’re not familiar with plasticine pricing — trust me, NZ$46 for one block is steep.
By making my own, I get full control over price, quality, quantity, and even colour. For someone like me, where this material is such a central part of my practice, that control just makes sense. If you’re curious about making your own — whether out of curiosity or necessity — I hope this article gets you there.
Plasticine is an oil-based modelling clay that stays soft and workable without ever drying out. It’s widely used in sculpture, stop-motion animation, and education.
It was invented in 1897 by English art teacher William Harbutt, who wanted a non-drying clay his students could reuse. He patented it in 1899 and began commercial production the following year. The original formula combined calcium salts, petroleum jelly, and fatty acids — non-toxic, reusable, and easy to shape. It became a school staple, and later famous through animation, especially Aardman’s Wallace & Gromit.
Today “plasticine” is often used generically for any non-hardening modelling clay, though the original brand still exists. Historically, natural waxes like beeswax served a similar purpose — just without the refinement or chemical stability of modern versions.
A Starting Formula
The traditional formula — calcium salts, petroleum jelly, fatty acids or wax — gives us a simple, useful foundation. It comes down to three components:
This basic combination is well known in sculpture circles and easy to replicate with materials from any hardware or grocery store — inexpensive, and a solid place to start.
My First Workshop Batch
My first attempt at homemade plasticine was in 2021, during a 10-week workshop at the Wellington School of Drawing, just after COVID. The course — Figure and Écorché — ran weekly sessions with a live model, sculpting the human figure with one side revealing the underlying muscular structure. It was the first course of its kind since I opened my Wellington studio in 2018.
For that course I produced around 60 kg of plasticine, in 10 kg batches, using:
It was affordable, workable, and did the job — but it had real problems. Overheat it, and the plaster reacted, turning the clay crumbly and dry. The mix was sticky and didn’t flow well. Large sculptures cracked from internal tension — something that simply doesn’t happen with high-end brands like NSP or Chavant’s Le Beau Touché.
Plasticines vary a lot by brand and formulation — some lean oil-rich, others wax-heavy. Oil-based versions are softer, closer to clay, and great for gestural work. Wax-based versions are firmer and hold detail better. Generally, the softer the plasticine, the stickier it is, thanks to higher oil content.
It’s worth being clear on the difference between the two, since it’s the key to getting a formula right:
In plasticine, wax holds everything together; oil adds fluidity. Get the ratio right and you have something workable. Too much oil, and it turns greasy and unstable. Too much wax, and it turns too hard to use.
Refining the Formula
Chasing something closer to Chavant’s quality, I started swapping ingredients one at a time.
Replacing beeswax with microcrystalline wax was a start. I tried paraffin wax (even the kind used for leg waxing) mixed with petroleum jelly, natural oils, and plaster — but the result was more crumbly than before; paraffin alone is too rigid. Combining beeswax and paraffin struck a better balance between structure and flexibility.
That helped the consistency, but I still wasn’t satisfied — and the culprit turned out to be the plaster. Cheap and accessible, yes, but unstable: it reacts to moisture and temperature. I moved to calcium carbonate, talcum powder, and clay dust as more stable alternatives, and that change made a real difference.
I also found that thick fats improve malleability but increase stickiness, while swapping some of them for fluid oils (mineral or canola) improved the texture — though it still wasn’t quite at Chavant’s level.
Getting There
After years of tests and tweaks, I finally landed on a combination that worked — a formula I refined until it matched the quality of Chavant’s own plasticines. I now produce and use it in my own studio, and since I can make it, I sell it too, as the A-Series.
If you’re curious, you can [learn more about the A-Series here].
If you’re setting out to make your own, I hope this gives you a real head start. My own learning curve was steep, with plenty of trial and error — I started from scratch, which is exactly why I know how valuable this information is. Following these steps should save you a lot of that guesswork, and once you land on a formula that works for you, the satisfaction is enormous.
Good luck with your experiments — and if you’d like to go deeper into materials, techniques, and tutorials, plus early access to both online and in-person workshops, sign up for my newsletter.
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This book is essential for learning more about the human figure as it is very complete. Includes proportions based on eight heads ( be aware that we are using 7.5 heads), bone structure explanation, balance and range of movement of the joins. The anatomy applied to the figure is not necessarily as accurate as in the Paul Richer book. This book also includes pictures of models for an applied explanation.
This book is excellent for learning anatomy from a medical perspective applied to art. Here we also find his 7.5 cannon explained. The illustrations are accurate, giving the precise location of muscles, layers and mapping of the human body. This book is used in official academies like the Florence academy.
In this book, Michel Lauricella presents both his artistic and systematic methods for drawing the human body–with drawing techniques from the écorché (showing the musculature underneath the skin) to sketches of models in action. In more than 1,000 illustrations, the human body is shown from a new perspective–from bone structure to musculature, from anatomical detail to the body in motion.
This small, portable book presents a unique perspective on the human body for artists to study and implement in their drawing work. In this book, artist and teacher Michel Lauricella simplifies the human body into basic shapes and forms, offering profound insight for artists of all kinds, sparking the imagination and improving one’s observational abilities. Rather than going the traditional route of memorizing a repertoire of poses, Lauricella instead stresses learning this small collection of forms, which can then be combined and shaped into the more complex and varied forms and postures we see in the living body.
This book provides a simplified and practical vision of the human skeleton to help all artists in their drawing studies. Here you will find the most common and useful approaches to the body’s underlying skeleton and bone structure, which will fuel your imagination and enrich your observational skills as you draw the living form. In this small, portable guide, artist and teacher Michel Lauricella focuses on the essentials you need to know.
This book is excellent for the quality of the drawings; very expressive, fresh and accurate. This book is recommended as a reference for the quality of work we can achieve in the art standards mostly applied to drawing. It is also a good source of images of bodies and living anatomy.
