We have many means to make colors.
Indigo is a plant dye. Purple comes from sea snails. Carmine red is from beetle shells. Dry it out, grind it up, mix it with linseed oil. Paint.
The earth tones are literally earth. The reddish-brown umber colors started out as the dirt in Umbria, Italy, where the earth is colorful with high amounts of minerals like rusty iron.
Some colors come straight out of the periodic table. Cadmium red. Cobalt blue.
I have a fat tube of ultramarine blue. There’s no ultramarine on rhe periodic table.
I got very excited when I read where that blue comes from.
Guess what ultramarine blue is made from. What would you grind up to make that color?
Yes. Lapis lazuli. They ground up lapis lazuli to make that paint … once. No more. Now sadly, it’s just synthetic, at least the stuff I buy. It’s a Mars tone, not an Earth tone.
Yet … I think I seriously have lapis lazuli beads from the jewelry-making days. And a sledgehammer.