Last year I found some random markers leftover from a PDXOS project and thought Hmm.
As part of exploring this Hmm I put a sheet of tracing paper (leftover from an encaustic Hmm that didn't pan out) over a b&w sketch and tried using the markers to make a bright, expressionist drawing.
The actual drawing didn't work for me (the colors seem morbid and the lines are too rigid), but it proved to me that markers could be a viable tool.
This test drawing got thrown in a pile near my desk.
Many months later I was cleaning the piles around my desk (actually cleaning might be too generous a term, I was making intermingling piles into slightly tidier stacks), and I happened to place the drawing on top of an abstract sketch.
Using the tracing paper months before had only been meant to save time so that I could get to the root of a question and see if the markers were a viable tool for me. Now I still didn't like either sketch, but together I was looking at something with potential. This could be method to keep my abstract and figurative modes separate during creation (as my brain prefers), then combine them after for a finished product. Hmm.