The vanadium ion in a strong acidic aqueous solution was visually detected and determined without pretreatment. This is achieved by chemically immobilizing the desferrioxamine B (DFB) on cellulose paper. The color of the cellulose paper selectively changes to purple. Though DFB is known to form several colored complexes, the vanadium complex could be selectively detected using the overlap of the color tone between the complexes and background, and/or using EDTA.