If color is a refraction of light, what is paint?

I know that color is supposed to just be the light bouncing off of an object, but then how does paint work? Is it because of the density of the paint and what the paint is made of?If color is a refraction of light, what is paint?
There are two kinds of color, reflected and transmitted. Your TV gives you the latter, a printed picture, the former.





The rules for mixing are different for the two types.





There is also false color of a couple of types. The iridescent colors of a butterfly or insect wing are not made with pigment, like paint, but by very thin layers of reflective material that only pass certain hues. That way is common in nature.





Apparent color can appear on a color wheel in a psych lab, using interrupted patters of black and white that appear as colors when the wheel is spun.





Paint absorbs all the colors except the one you want, similar to how the atmosphere filters out everything but blue.

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