Fashion designer Alannah Hill has entered the building but there’s still confusion about the whereabouts of Hugh Jackman, Nick Cave and Barry Humphries.

They’re some of the subjects of this year’s Archibald prize entries, which began arriving at the Art Gallery of NSW in trucks, vans and on car roofs on Monday morning.

Almost 870 portraits were entered in the competition last year – a number expected to be matched before this year’s entry cut-off on Friday, and anyone can enter.

Last year’s finalist Guy Morgan is back with a portrait of astronomer Fred Watson painted with an eye dropper.

“I do paintings of stars … and Fred being an astronomer I thought `why not paint the astronomer who has inspired a lot of my interest in the night sky’,” he said.

Morgan started portraiture after a retinal detachment left him being unable to see circles or straight lines from his left eye.

Despite his success last year, Morgan isn’t convinced he’ll make it to the finals with his Watson painting.

“If I make it this year, it’ll be like making it for the first time twice, because the paintings are so totally different,” he said.

The Archibald, first awarded in 1921, is Australia’s best-known art prize.

This year, the major winner will take home $75,000.

Artists entering the Wynne Prize, for the best Australian landscape or figure sculpture and the Sulman Prize for the best subject or genre painting or mural also began dropping off their entries from Monday.

A selection of artworks from all three prizes will be displayed from July 19 to September 28, 2014.