Ya, I like to be careful about showing my entries till after the contest. There are some artists that already have a picture of their entries up on their websites/blogs, but the way the contest is run the judges are not supposed to know who did the painting... (we are not allowed to sign them till after the contest)
I doubt it would ever happen, but for some reason if a judge or someone who helps with the contest happened to see the entry and knows who did it, they might disqualify the entry all together. This year I decided to go with canadian geese because I have A LOT of reference photos.
But, here is a stamp entry from a while ago...
