It's paint. It is John Deere "Blitz Black". It's a satin black, obviously as you already said. $10 a quart. Plus hardner and thinner. There's $75 in the real paint plus the spray paint for the mouth and eye. It was starting to get pretty rusty so it was needing paint anyway. Should stay looking decent for a couple years anyway. We ground off and POR 15'd all the rust that was showing. Fixed a big hole in the front of the hood with a new piece of sheet metal. I've got some pictures I took while we worked I might try to post later.