I miss sculpting, too, and I think it could have been done differently in TS4 to avoid copying TS3. Like, I always wanted a way to sculpt a statue of my Mayor other prominent citizens, either to honor them by placing their statue/torso in a park or in front of a public building, or to decorate a family grave. There might be more uses of a personal sculpture, too. For obvious reasons this would need to be done in stone, not ice. I can already hear Judith Ward claiming a statue of herself being placed in the Ward Park ;)
I hope sculpting like this might come with a Kit. Shouldn't be that hard to program as the shape of each sim is already defined and texture would be set. Aaand - unless something freaky should happen to statues once a year, there would be very few animations involved, too.
PS: Also the Scientist career (GTW) has a touch of Inventor.