Gabriel Picolo is a Brazilian illustrator known for warm, cinematic drawings of couples and for his work on DC's bestselling Teen Titans graphic novels. This gallery brings together his romantic illustrations, including many pages from his popular story of a girl made of fire and a boy with wings, a modern retelling of the myth of Icarus and the sun.
Who is Gabriel Picolo?
Picolo first drew a large online following around 2014 with a project to draw every day for a year, sharing the results on social media. His relaxed, fashion-aware characters and soft colour made his posts popular on Instagram, where he signs his work "Picolo".
That online audience led to professional work. With writer Kami Garcia he illustrated the DC Ink young-adult graphic novels Teen Titans: Raven (2019), Teen Titans: Beast Boy (2020) and Teen Titans: Beast Boy Loves Raven (2021). Several fan illustrations in this gallery, including a Raven and Beast Boy scene, show that interest in the characters before the books appeared.
Sun and Icarus: the story behind the fire girl
In Greek myth the craftsman Daedalus built wings of feathers and wax so that he and his son Icarus could escape from Crete. He warned Icarus not to fly too low, where sea spray would weigh the wings down, or too high, where the sun would melt the wax. Icarus flew too close to the sun, his wings failed, and he fell into the sea. The fullest ancient telling is in Ovid's Metamorphoses, and "flying too close to the sun" is still used for reckless ambition.
Picolo's version turns the myth into a love story. The sun is a girl whose hair and body glow with flame; Icarus is a winged boy who keeps getting closer to her even as he starts to melt. One drawing makes it explicit with a note signed "To: Sun, From: Icarus". Across the series the couple meets, falls in love, breaks up and tries again, and the fire and dripping wax show what that closeness costs.
Early sketches and fan art
A boy in an orange tracksuit and headphones kisses a girl with pink hair and dark make-up, his hand gently under her chin. The contrast between sporty and goth styles is part of the charm, and it shows Picolo's eye for fashion as character.
A dark-haired young man with an 'R' on his shirt holds the face of a red-haired woman as they kiss. The emblem and colours suggest a nod to Robin and Starfire of DC's Teen Titans, characters Picolo would later draw professionally.
A dark-haired girl and a green-skinned boy sleep in a messy bedroom full of pizza boxes and phones, with a green dog curled at their feet. The colours point to Raven and Beast Boy of the Teen Titans, the couple at the centre of Picolo's later graphic novels.
In a pencil sketch with glowing coloured highlights, a girl made of fire lies across a grey-haired boy on a sofa. This is one of the first appearances of the fire-and-shadow couple that runs through the rest of this gallery.
The same couple embraces on a bed, the girl glowing with flames while small fires flicker in the background. Picolo leaves the boy in grey pencil and colours only the girl, so her warmth seems to light the page.
A short exchange, 'Since when...?' and 'I always knew', is drawn with the fire girl sitting up in bed. It is a tiny story told in two speech bubbles.
The boy now has large, dark wings and lets the glowing girl rest on his lap. The wings are the first hint that he is an Icarus figure and she is the sun.
The fire girl and the winged boy
In three stacked panels, the winged boy's face starts to melt as the fire-haired girl comes closer. In the myth Icarus's wings were held together with wax, so being close to the sun is both what he wants and what destroys him.
In a forest at night the glowing girl and a dark figure talk about what each of them is running from. The dialogue is about wanting to think about nothing at all, a quiet look at how two people find calm together.
Painted in a sketchbook, the couple hugs while his feathers drip, and a panel reads 'Maybe we're just not meant to be'. It is the first clear sign that the story is heading toward heartbreak.
Four panels show the girl curled asleep beside him; as they move further apart, her hair and colour fade from orange to pale pink. Colour stands in for her feelings: the further she is from him, the colder she becomes.
'We need to talk' leads to 'I'm leaving you' as the melting boy holds the fire girl close. In two panels Picolo sets up the break-up that the next images explore.
The winged boy cradles the burning girl in front of a sun-like circle while his body drips like candle wax onto the floor. It is the most symbolic image in the set, drawing the sun-and-Icarus idea out fully.
Panels showing a kitchen shelf and potted plants carry a line about tying himself 'more tightly into you with each new embrace'. Her hair wraps around him like rope, a picture of love that can bind as well as hold.
A grid labels the five stages of grief, denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance, across scenes of the break-up. The five-stage model comes from Elisabeth Kübler-Ross's 1969 work on dying, and is often borrowed, loosely, to describe heartbreak.
In a three-panel exchange the girl asks why he does not want to be her boyfriend, and he says things will go bad and he will hurt her. Her answer, 'Silly... how do you know?', sums up the hope and fear at the heart of the series.
The couple plans to pack up and head over the flatlands toward the hills, with a full moon to light the way. The scene ends with 'That's the stupidest, most reckless thing I've ever heard. Let's do it!', a lovely beat of shared adventure.
The fire-haired girl holds the winged boy close beneath the question 'Are you afraid of love, or afraid of not being loved back?'. It may be the clearest statement of what the whole story is about.
A giant, sorrowful version of the girl sits among burning trees while a small figure runs away under the words 'Post-break up runaway'. The landscape itself seems to be on fire with her feelings.
A note reading 'You melt my heart, To: Sun, From: Icarus' frames the couple embracing under green wings. This drawing names the two characters directly and confirms the myth behind the series.
Sitting alone in a burning landscape, the girl hugs her knees beside the words 'If all else fails, use fire'. It is a half-joking, half-defiant line about turning hurt into strength.
In a dark bedroom, a small door opens in the sleeping boy's chest and a tiny version of the girl steps inside toward his heart. It is a gentle visual idea for being let into someone's inner life.
A page of panels shows the girl at home with small foxes who comment on whether she should let him back in. Picolo uses the animals as her inner voices, adding humour to a tense moment.
A tiny figure asks 'May I... come in?', and the girl, glowing among constellations, draws a heart in the stars. The scene turns letting someone back into your life into something cosmic.
A full comic page follows the conversation in which the boy finally explains his feelings and his fear of being a 'problem to solve'. Reading it in full shows how Picolo paces a story through panel size and silence.
The girl, small as a doll, walks across the sleeping boy's chest toward a heart bound up in her own red hair. The text, 'I want to fall asleep and wake knowing my heart is safe', is one of the most quoted lines from the series.
The girl points out a 'shooting star' to make a wish on, but it turns out to be a burning winged figure falling to earth. It is another nod to Icarus's fall, framed as a moment of bad news.
Under a starry sky the girl rides on the winged boy's back and he says he loves her to the moon and back; she answers 'Shhh, don't say that'. The scene is sweet and uneasy at the same time.
This panel sequence repeats the 'You don't want me to be your girlfriend' conversation in a slightly different crop. Seeing it twice shows how Picolo often reworks and reposts favourite moments.
In an unfinished pencil sketch the couple embraces in a bowl of melted wax under the words 'I love you despite the warning signs'. It brings the series back to where it began: love that continues even when both know it may burn.
What the drawings say about love
Picolo's romance works because it focuses on small, real moments: falling asleep together, a nervous question, a joke about a bad plan. The fire-and-wax imagery then adds a second layer, a reminder that closeness can feel both warming and dangerous, and that fear of getting hurt can push people away from the very thing they want. Many readers see their own relationships in it, which is why these pages were shared so widely.
Sources: All illustrations by Gabriel Picolo. Gabriel Picolo on Instagram, Gabriel Picolo on Facebook, Wikipedia: Kami Garcia (Teen Titans books with Picolo), Wikipedia: Icarus.
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