This t-shirt design was created for the graduating School Of Ministry class at Revival.  I wanted to use Christian symbolism but not the typical symbolism that is most often used.  I came across the Mariner's Cross and loved it.  The Mariner's Cross is an anchor with a cross beam, I added the fish for extra Christian symbolism.  I used about a dozen different photos for reference to draw my own Mariner's Cross and fish.

 

This was my process...

First I used my photo references to sketch out the anchor and cross bar.

Then on a separate piece of paper I sketched the fish and rope that will wrap around the cross.

Then I brought the drawing into Illustrator and began a rough tracing.

I made some custom brushes and used them for shading, to give it a uniform gradient that feels more "mechanical" and less "hand drawn".

I added a little more shading and detail.

I made a copy of the left side and reflected it to make the design symmetrical.

Then I started tracing the drawing of my fish.  I reduced the transparency of the anchor so that I could see how the fish would work while I was drawing it.

I drew the scales by repeating ovals in a pattern.  Then I used the "warp" effect and set it to "arc" to get the scales to bend with the shape of the fish.  No way did I want to draw those out by hand!

The "width tool" came in very handy for makng the details in the fish's face and fins.

I used a clipping mask to wrap the fish around the anchor.

I adjusted the fish to fit better, created a custom brush to make the rope, and adjusted some details on the anchor.  I thought wood grain would be a nice touch to offer symbolism of the cross that Jesus Christ was sacrificed on.

 

To  make the wood grain I drew wavy paths, used the "simplify" funciton to smooth them out, and aranged them kinda like wood grain.  Then I used a rectangle clipping mask.

Add some text, and we are done!

Thank you for viewing! :)