Badmin was born in Sydenham and started his artistic training at Camberwell School of Arts and Crafts and the Royal College of Art, London. At the age of only 26, Badmin became one of the youngest associate members of the Royal Watercolour Society. Badmin was particularly inspired by the English rural landscape. He was commissioned to produce book illustrations and produced his first illustration in 1937 for the Highway and Byways of Essex by Clifford Bax. Although Badmin worked with Puffin and Penguin Books, his most famous commissions came from organisations such as Shell and London Transport along with a series of posters for British Railways. Badmin went on to teach at the Central School of Art in the 1950s and died in Bignor, West Sussex in 1989.