How to create daily reminders and reminders before due date?

I would like to create daily reminder emails for an approval node in a workflow. Is there a way to accomplish this? When configuring the escalations on an approval node you have to put in a new escalation for each time you want the escalation workflow to run instead of an option to say run this escalation every day that the approval not finished.

Additionally, I would like to send out reminder emails BEFORE an approval is due. For example, I would like to set the due date of an approval to be 5 days after the creation of the reminders. Then I want to be able to send reminder emails letting the approve know that the due date is approaching. Since escalations are measured in days AFTER the due date I tried to accomplish this by adding escalations that are triggered in -4 days, -3 days, -2 days, and -1 day.