With the warmer months now, my partner and I have been busy with our garden. One of the projects we are working on is creating an aqua garden! When we bought two of our huge Japanese stone water reservoirs for the garden, the staff came up with this brilliant idea: Fill them up with water, add plants and algae, then have some small fishes in it. How clever! The birds would love them, especially as we live in an area surrounded by a wide variety of species. So why not give it a try? As soon as we browsed on-line, I noticed Marimos were also sold. “Oh let’s get some kawaii Marimo!” I excitedly exclaimed…
Marimo Explained
And what is a Marimo, you ask? Also known as Cladophora ball, moss ball, moss ball pet, or lake ball, Marimo is a rare growth form of Aegagropila linnaei (a species of filamentous green algae) in which the algae grow into large green balls with a velvety appearance [source: Wikipedia]. I just call them “those cute little green furry balls from Hokkaido”. That is because they typically exist in Hokkaido in my country, Japan. Unfortunately, we never got to see them as they are in season in October when we are not there. And here is something interesting. Having done further research, Marimo symbolizes everlasting love! Legend has it that Senato, the daughter of an Ainu tribal Chief and a commoner named Maribe were in love but forbidden to be together. Upon eloping to Lake Akan in Hokkaido, they jumped in, and their hearts turned into the moss balls, since renamed Marimo. What a story! And since 1950, Marimo Festival takes place every fall at Lake Akan to encourage folks to preserve this particular species of moss ball.
Painting Marimo
Having stuff from my native Japan sitting in our garden all the way here in the Netherlands certainly brings us so much joy. As soon as the packet of those ten “cute little green furry balls” arrived the other day, I naturally squealed with excitement! My partner immediately filled the stone reservoir with the water from our stream behind the garden, since aqua plants thrive better in natural water rather than tap or distilled water for the nutrients. So far looking great! And of course I wanted to paint about it. A great opportunity to practice with texture brushes and light modes on my Procreate digital art app. Interestingly, the Marimos were done with an aquarelle brush (Bloom Accents). The rest then followed with the Water brush from the Elements set for that ripple effect in the background. Flowers drawn in and Leafy Mix brush was applied. That bubbly appearance were from the Opticon brush. What made this session further exciting was experimenting with various light modes including Luminosity, Light, Color Burn and Screen. And now that’s quite an amazing result!
To be honest, I had no idea about the romantic legend or the symbolism behind Marimo until I did some research for this blog. It has now given me further inspiration! How about another cute sweet painting about Marimo, but next time focus on the love aspect? Little One and BF will of course be featured! So please watch this space. Meanwhile, I am very pleased with this abstract painting and enjoyed creating it!
My Kawaii Quarter 