Hey Nicole, good attempt! If you are going to use charcoal (imho) the only choice is smooth (it is important it is smooth, textured will make it much harder to get smooth tone) newsprint. For Charcoal pencils... it used to be Conte a Paris but they have changed their manufacturing recently and I see a lot of broken charcoal... alternatives I like are Marie's soft and General's 4b. For graphite if you want a dark pencil Blackwing Matte's or 602's are what I like... 602's are harder (so not as dark) but are a nice "do it all" whereas the Matte's get some nice darks but wear pretty fast on a lot of paper. Also it can help to use a paper stump or chamois (and of course practice laying down flat, even tone regularly)