how to create image in view

Is there the equivalent to the image_tag in rails to pull an image with the appropriate mockup?

You should be able to replicate the functionality of rails image_tag pretty easily by adding something like this in your QApplication.class.php:

public static function ImageTag($strFilename) {
    echo sprintf('<img src="%s/%s" border="0" />', __IMAGE_ASSETS__, $strFilename);
}

Then in your template:

QApplication::ImageTag('my_mockup.jpg');