changing colors?

Today I did my first really busy gig, the kind where you don't look up and keep painting after the party's over (it was a volunteer job, for a charity I support in many ways). It was really the first chance I'd had to see how paints react with all different kinds of skin.

My first surprise was a red head with lots of freckles who wanted a Ninja Turtle. I started applying DFX light green with a sponge and was startled to see him start glowing! All around the edge of the paint, he had a yellow halo effect. Since the Turtles are supposed to be radioactive, I told him this was a super realistic face that only I offered, and it was all good.

The second surprise was a African American girl with medium-dark skin. She wanted to be a tiger but, as I applied Starblend orange, turned bright red. I switched to DFX orange, with similar effect, then had more success with DFX golden yellow. It ended up having a dimensional effect that looked really cool but would not have looked good on, say, a pumpkin.

What causes this phenomenon? Is it a chemical thing, or just an effect on people who have strong underlying base tones? How do you combat it? Is there a way to predict when it will happen?

As always, thanks for any insight you have.

Never heard of that...

That sounds weird, doesn't sound too good to me either actually...

Some kind of reaction to the paint anyway, I would say.

I don't think it was the skin reacting to the paint, Willoughby. When I said the girl's face turned red, I didn't mean red as in inflamed, I meant red as in it was like I'd used red Starblends instead of Orange. Nobody had any physiological signs of a reaction, no burning/tingling/itching, no swelling, no stuffiness or eye watering. I'd have stopped applying paint if that were the case.

What it kind of reminded me of is when I wear yellow. I have very fair, blue-tinged skin and when I wear a yellow top or scarf, my skin turns a grey-green color. I know we've talked about how some paints can make skin look ashy, or some skin making applied paint look chalky. I wonder if it's something along those lines.