A pigment is a substance that gives color to something. When you squeeze paint from a tube, the bright red or deep blue comes from tiny particles of pigment mixed into the paint. Artists have used pigments for thousands of years, grinding up minerals, plants, and even insects to create colors for their paintings.

Your own body contains pigments too. Melanin is the pigment that determines your skin, hair, and eye color. The more melanin you have, the darker these features appear. When you get a suntan, your skin produces more melanin to help protect it from the sun's rays.

Plants use a green pigment called chlorophyll to capture energy from sunlight and make food. In autumn, when chlorophyll breaks down in leaves, other pigments that were hidden all summer finally show through, revealing brilliant yellows, oranges, and reds.

Pigments differ from dyes: pigments are solid particles that sit on top of or get mixed into materials, while dyes dissolve and soak in. When you use watercolor paints, you're working with pigments suspended in water. Without pigments, our world would be surprisingly drab and colorless.