how do you get your darks darker than dark?
variant, how do I get my blacks blacker?

I usually stick to ink because, despite formula ink coming up short on actual hue black, ink is as close to charcoal black as I can get without sacrificing controlability. still ink, despite using varying pressure, cannot be used in the same manner [with the same reliability or ease of use] as pencils.

therefor, I am forced to go back to tools like graphite, ebony, chalk, and charcoal pencils. I notice, however, there is a trade off with graphite and ebony pencils where what should be darkness is replaced with a shine or gloss coupled with a nonauthenticated black, rather a darker shade of the same generic gray they were producing earlier. chalk black pencils were black, but glossed like hell, and even so, it didn't make deep black, -where it was producing an actual black shade it didn't make the black dark enough. charcoal on the other hand makes black and gray to black shades respectively as you use different pressures. charcoal does make deep black but it's so messy and difficult to control it doesn't seem practical for every pencil drawing.

if you are still reading at this point give me your adress and I'll send you ten dollars. it appears inevitable that either everything is shaded too dark or not dark enough. in my never ending quest to use the whole value scale it isn't a matter of using darks, its getting the dark parts I want dark to be penetratingly dark, dark enough to not just be a dark area, but a dark dark, dark-dark-dark, or "black-black". the 8-10 on a value chart.

is there some hidden trick to getting dark shades without gloss? is it some hidden technique that allows only grand masters to harness the full value spectrum with an ordinary graphite pencil? is it merely an illusion by only placing dark spots next to lightly shaded areas? is there some user manual technique I missed while cracking jokes in art class? does woolite dark help?