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I have always based the miniatures and then painted over the basing material. I was wondering if it was possible to just base using sand etc without painting it over (or whether the perspective looks wrong - like a painted bit of rock looks more rock-like than just putting a bit of rock down).

Give it a try. But I think most of the time a coat or two of paint make it have a better same look and feel as the model.

It won't look right. The color is wrong, the texture is wrong, and the end result inevitably looks like a painted model glued onto some sand/rocks/whatever instead of a coherent whole. It's probably even worse with sand because the glue is going to be visible underneath the sand and look obviously unfinished. And really, given how little time it takes to paint bases, why settle for low-quality results?

I've tried this with sand and it looked terrible.

I've recently tried with smashed up bits of slate. That worked quite well.

I was going to say that slate is about the only thing that looks half-way decent unpainted. Painting your basic material really ties the model together and gives it that "complete" look. Also makes it a lot easier to unify the army's bases and overall feel.

Unpainted mixed sand/grit with some static grass tufts. Base rims painted brown to match (generally before adding the sand and allowed to dry!). Undiluted PVA applied to the base, and then dunked in sand. Superglue was used with the static grass clumps, or more neat PVA for regular static grass.