Carmen’s piece is about the connective tissue disorder Rheumatoid arthritis, or RA. The disorder has an unknown cause, but is linked to certain genetic factors that leave individuals with a predisposition for the disorder. In her art piece, she painted a joint affected with RA next to a normal joint to show comparison. In the affected joint, there is more space between the bones due to an enlargement of the synovium, or capsule of synovial fluid that surrounds the joints. The reason for these enlargements is because the immune system recognizes the bodies joints as a pathogen and attacks them. In her piece, she gracefully painted two near identical bones with the differences in the structures lying visibly within the joint capsule, which she greatly enlarged. The cartilaginous matter around the joints is also smaller, because of the synovium taking more space. I can clearly see why this disorder would cause so much pain, because the synovium is greatly swollen, but everything else would have to be compressed due to them all having to take up the same amount of space. She painted all of the layers of a bone, from the spongy inside layer of bone to the dense outer layer of bone- she utilized different tones of one color as well as darker colored shadowing to showcase the different parts of the bone. Her piece was artfully crafted and went along with her short paper.
Posted by 
Carmen’s piece is about the connective tissue disorder Rheumatoid arthritis, or RA. The disorder has an unknown cause, but is linked to certain genetic factors that leave individuals with a predisposition for the disorder. In her art piece, she painted a joint affected with RA next to a normal joint to show comparison. In the affected joint, there is more space between the bones due to an enlargement of the synovium, or capsule of synovial fluid that surrounds the joints. The reason for these enlargements is because the immune system recognizes the bodies joints as a pathogen and attacks them. In her piece, she gracefully painted two near identical bones with the differences in the structures lying visibly within the joint capsule, which she greatly enlarged. The cartilaginous matter around the joints is also smaller, because of the synovium taking more space. I can clearly see why this disorder would cause so much pain, because the synovium is greatly swollen, but everything else would have to be compressed due to them all having to take up the same amount of space. She painted all of the layers of a bone, from the spongy inside layer of bone to the dense outer layer of bone- she utilized different tones of one color as well as darker colored shadowing to showcase the different parts of the bone. Her piece was artfully crafted and went along with her short paper.