Walt Whitman’s poetry connects the body, the city, desire and collective life through an expansive and radically personal voice. In this original mixed-media portrait, I reinterpret his iconic appearance with rough contours, layered colour and visible drawing marks instead of a formal literary likeness. The image holds together confidence and fragility, treating the face as a field of movement rather than a fixed monument. Created in Istanbul, the work belongs to my ongoing portrait series of writers, musicians, filmmakers and thinkers who transformed artistic language. Original Walt Whitman portrait illustration by İlker Ortaç, an Istanbul-based writer, illustrator and visual artist.