Fata Morgana

James Gurney recently devoted a blog entry to the illusuion known as Fata Morgana http://gurneyjourney.blogspot.com/2010/01/superior-mirage.html

This reminded me of something I once heard about mythical mushroom-shaped islands. The thought inspired an idea for a scene whereby one such island has broken at the stem, as it were, and toppled, with the ruins of an ancient city discernible on the now-sloping upper face. My first experiment with the idea in photoshop resulted in the attached image, not a great success (environments aren't within my comfort zone) but maybe I will return to the idea later on.