how is colour dye/paint made?? where do you get the colour for it?

Question: how is colour dye/paint made?? where do you get the colour for it?
- Keywords:
  colour,
  dye,
  paint
Asked by koonertwh to David, Helen, Ian, rhysphillips, Sarah on 21 Jun 2011.
- Rhys Phillips answered on 14 Jun 2011:
  
  I think it varies a lot for different types of paint – oxides of metals, tree bark and crushed insects have all been used in various forms of paint and dye at times.
- Ian van der Linde answered on 21 Jun 2011:
  
  To make paint, you’d need to buy chemicals called pigments. These might either be man made (like bromothiol blue) or natural (like choconeal – made from ground up beatles!). These have a chemical structure that allows them to absorb certain frequencies of light while the other frequencies are reflected. What gets reflected determines the colour you see. We then mix these together to get the colour we want, just like you do in art class.

Question: how is colour dye/paint made?? where do you get the colour for it?