The Escape KeEP

This radio show was put together during the summer of 2020. Bad news was in abundance. Strife was rife throughout the nation. Fires burned away precious forests and homes along the entire west coast. While I was relatively safe from the conflagrations, the air quality in Portland was deemed hazardous. You couldn’t, or shouldn’t go out in it unless you really had to. Not too much of a problem; I was already doing a whole bunch of that thanks to Covid-19.

Confined to the indoors, I longed for the carefree days of exploring mountainous terrains, breathing in the refreshing pine scents, and being exhilarated by the ocean roar. Really, anywhere besides the three rooms I’ve been living in would do. There was a constant longing to just escape. But that longing needed to just go unfulfilled. Sure, I could still technically go outside, but not without a certain small degree of peril. Instead, I chose to turn inward.

The computer has become my window to the world. Looking out of it, you can choose to see horrors or delight. Sometimes you don’t get to choose. Sometimes you don’t know what is horror or delight. Sometimes it is an ambiguous mixture of the two. But that is just speaking for web browsers I suppose.

Most of my escapes involve creative endeavor. Much of my many hours alone are spent behind this machine doing creative stuff. Whether it is building playlists for the radio show, recording songs, tweaking layouts, or experimenting with digital painting, it always feels like time well spent.

Anyone who spends enough time on a computer will know that they sometimes just fail to function. Or, the computer is functioning and the software doesn’t acknowledge the computer anymore. In these cases, the Esc-key can be essential to getting you back into the groove. And if you can’t, there’s always a hard reboot.

The idea for The Escape Keep came to me suddenly while cooking dinner. I had recently seen a number of album covers that featured an ancient temple in either a jungle or a forest. Here’s a space that is both remote and well fortified. It is a perfect spot to escape.

The style was inspired by those progressive rock album covers. I’ve always loved Roger Dean and stuff like that. 1950s science fiction covers were also inspiring to me. Photos of Incan temples from Machu Picchu were also referenced for color and composition.

The temple was originally drawn in pencil on paper. While there are tools for this on the computer, I found it more illuminating and therapeutic to just do it old school with a ruler. Also, I had been studying old drawing instruction books about this and was eager to try my hand. The pencil sketch was scanned into the computer and then the basic shape and lines rendered in Adobe Illustrator. That was exported to Photoshop where I used various brushes to paint the landscape and figures.

While I was able to pull off the general idea, I felt more detail could have been added. However, I gave myself a day to complete the painting since the audio portion took much longer than expected. The show was airing in less than a day and needed to be promoted. This concept is cool enough to revisit at some point when my painting skills are better honed. It was certainly a great exercise in perspective drawing and quickly executing a fairly weird concept.

You can listen to the 2-hour episode (Planet Yoon #30: The Escape Keep) of Planet Yoon HERE.